


Solitary 5 Point 0

by Gioiosa



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Abduction, Gen, Isolation, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 70,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gioiosa/pseuds/Gioiosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron Hotchner has been abducted. The Team is on the case, but in the end it will come down to Hotch versus an UNSUB as observant and skilled at psychological manipulation as Aaron is. This is 50 chapters and is a Work in Progress. Written with Esperanta from FFN.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Justice Starts Here

**Author's Note:**

> Co-written with Esperanta, she who keeps my prose typo-free and boasts an imagination more twisted than my own. The only things we created were this creepy little world and a few original characters.

**Solitary 5.0**

**Chapter One**

**Justice Starts Here**

**  
**

The man who called himself Warden peered through a light spatter of rain on his windshield. Like his prey, he was a meticulous man, intelligent, observant, and orderly. Prepared for any contingency. No wild streak of impulsivity darkened his mental makeup.

But—also, like his prey—he could seem impulsive when his preparation met unparalleled opportunity and his powerful intellect recognized potential. Like his prey, he had the courage it took to break free of his own patterns and seize victory when it presented itself.

Like now, when the lawyer whom he'd been tracking so carefully, so meticulously, suddenly emerged from his garage into the light late-afternoon rain of a Friday in early May. He wore khakis, a light blue knit shirt, a plain navy nylon windbreaker, and a billed cap with the FBI insignia. He carried a tarpaulin and a folded nylon tent in his arms. Behind him, the garage door remained raised, rolled to its fullest height.

The lawyer was a cautious man, a meticulous man. The open door meant he would be back within just a few minutes. He was at home here, safe, in his quiet yard, on his quiet street, but he was also vigilant. Rigorously careful. He would not leave the door rolled up for more than a minute or two.

The man bent on destroying him did not hesitate for even an instant. Because he was always prepared, he didn't have to waste so much as a heartbeat regretting that he had not brought this item or that one, or to wish this had happened at a more convenient time. _Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation._

_It won't go down at the car wash in June after all._

He pulled to the curb, turned off the engine, and exited his surveillance vehicle. Walking with a relaxed and confident gait, the stride of a man who _belongs here_ , who _fits in_ , he made his way up the driveway of the adjoining house, which was almost a mirror image of his prey's own. It now stood vacant. Warden stepped across the narrow strip of grass that separated the two properties, and slipped into his prey's open garage.

**~ o ~**

_Incomprehensible pain._

_Christ, it's a heart attack, maybe a stroke, I can't die now. We just got settled. Jack's due here in an hour, shit, damn Dad and his fucking Type-A personality genes, I can't die early, too, I_ _need to get help_ , _call 911_ , and as he struggled with suddenly nerveless fingers to reach for his cell phone he tumbled forward, barely saving himself from falling smack on his face on the floor of the garage.

_That I haven't swept since we moved in, God, it's filthy…._

"Arms out," an unfamiliar voice said—and where the hell did that come from, anyway? Male. Middle-aged. Not so much authoritative as, as—

_Ow!_

_Oh, Jesus, worse than a stroke…._

"Arms out," the voice repeated. "All the way out and away from your sides, or I'll turn up the power on my little Enforcer next time."

As the owner of the confident voice—and the Taser, or the Taser-like device, that was now pressed against the back of his neck—straddled his torso, he obediently extended his arms, arms that were sluggish, slow to respond. No, not a Taser. A cattle prod; he could tell by the contacts. _And he has named it. Probably the kind of guy who names his penis, too ..._

_Somebody has to see this. Some passing car. Some neighbor in search of the evening paper._

In a suspense novel, the hero would find something useful conveniently at his fingertips as he lay cruciform on his garage floor on a rainy spring evening. Real life was a bitch: His right hand touched nothing but dusty poured concrete. His left hand rested beside the right front wheel of his van. So—filthy, but uncluttered.

_A little clutter would be useful about now. A wrench, hammer, piece of pipe. Almost anything._

"It's like this," his assailant said as he swiftly and expertly searched Aaron, confiscating his cell phone and removing the battery, which he pitched across the garage floor. Calm. Matter of fact. "I'm not strong enough to knock you out and then wrestle you into my truck. So in order to move you from point A to point B, I'll have to harness your own kinetic and potential energy."

_Kinetic and potential energy? This guy sounds like Reid's evil twin…or maybe my junior high science teacher._

His attacker went on. "You have two motivators. The first is my device. If need be, I can turn it up so it immobilizes you completely—but then again, there I am trying to wrestle you into my truck. So my fallback position is this: If I have to immobilize you and drag you over to the truck, it will take more time, and you don't have time to spare. There is an explosive device set to go off in eleven minutes at 113 Aspenwood Circle. I believe that you're familiar with the neighborhood?"

"Yes," he whispered, horrified. _Can't show him fear._

The pain of the cattle prod was nothing to the pain that pierced his heart at the mention of Jessica Brooks's address, where his son at this moment was probably shoving toys and treats into his backpack, getting ready to head home to his father in her minivan.

"In eleven—well, ten, now, ten minutes the device will go off if I don't drive by and disarm it. I can do it remotely." The man who now straddled his back began rapidly, enthusiastically, to describe the precise makeup and placement of the device. Hotchner knew just enough about bombs to recognize that the guy knew his stuff. Worse, the man referred confidently to the layout of Jessica's property, the make and model of her minivan. He knew that stuff, too. "So do I have your undivided attention now?" he concluded.

"Yes." He wasn't even trying to keep the apprehension out of his voice anymore.

"So time is of the essence. When I bring the truck up the drive, I will come back in to get you. You will stand up and walk to the truck. You will not attempt to call out or otherwise attract attention. You will do this because if you disobey me, I will hurt you, and then we will run late and you will hurt your family. I may not be strong, but I am organized and I am determined."

_Wow. And you're profiling yourself for me_.

If Jess and Jack were not in danger, too, Aaron might actually have found that amusing in a twisted kind of way.

"All right, now put your hands behind you."

"What do you want?" Aaron asked.

The business end of the cattle prod slid along the back of his neck. "Don't make me shock you again; it'll just take time, and you don't have time. You may speak only when spoken to. Now shut up and put your hands behind you."

He complied with a sigh.

"Don't worry. I don't want to hurt any innocents," the man holding him down said. "The only reason I would do that would be to punish you, so—as long as you behave, your loved ones are safe."

Weirdly, Hotch believed him. That gave him courage.

Cords were wound around his wrists, then the man climbed off him and attached his hands to his ankles. The son of a bitch was hog-tying him! How in the hell was he supposed to get to the truck, wiggle?

"I'll be right back," the man said, and after a moment added smugly, "Don't go anywhere."

When he got to his feet and left the garage, Hotch twisted his head around and peered over his shoulder to steal his first look at his personal UNSUB: maybe five-eight, mid- to late forties, build thin but tough, fairly athletic. Light brown hair, possibly going gray, worn in untidy bangs practically to his eyebrows. Black-rimmed glasses. A terrific crop of muttonchop whiskers. Nothing even remotely familiar about him. He jogged through the evening mist in his jeans and corduroy shirt and climbed into an older model dark blue truck with a camper cap. The vehicle started with an unhealthy cough and moved into the driveway of the vacant house adjacent to his own.

No plate on the front bumper, which eliminated a lot of states right there—unless, of course, he'd removed the rear plates too, but then that would bring him to the attention of any police car that spotted him.

The man left the truck's engine running as he got out. Producing what indeed proved to be a long antique cattle prod from his right-hand back pocket, he beamed down at Hotchner. "Ready to come on board?"

"You don't need to do this," Aaron said.

The man crouched down. "Actually, I do," he said, conversationally. "And you were not given permission to speak." He adjusted something on the awkward-looking metal device, and bent down. "This will make movement difficult."

"No," Hotchner managed to gasp before the current hit him. His synapses scrambled, all of his muscles spasmed and contracted, and the pain made him dizzy and confused. He felt the cords falling away from his limbs, and then a calm voice directed him to stand up slowly and carefully.

He had been operating on the assumption that once the bonds were removed he might be able to resist his would-be captor, to drag him down and wrest the remote from his person, to tear off wildly for Jessica's house, but the most recent jolt of electricity had left him weak and uncoordinated. It was all he could do to drag himself upright, clinging to the side of his van.

"Now," the voice said, "to the truck, quietly and steadily. No quick movements. Your family's well-being is contingent on your obedience."

Hotchner doubted that he even had the capacity for quick movement at the moment. He could barely stand, and the world kept lurching around him. _Hurry_ , he kept telling himself. _We're down to eight minutes and it's a five-minute drive. One foot in front of the other._

He would have given almost anything for a gun.

**~ o ~**

Warden leaned over. With his left hand he pulled the seatbelt across his wobbly prize and snapped it firmly into place, his right hand holding the prod tightly against the lawyer's side to discourage any attempt at resistance.

Once he had the man securely belted in, he laid the prod on the dash, within easy reach, then fished around under his seat for the little bag with the drug and the needle he'd previously stashed there. Carefully filling the hypodermic, he even tapped it for air bubbles, something he had never seen a real nurse do, though he had seen it often on TV. "Give me your left arm," he directed.

The lawyer looked at the needle warily. "You don't need to do that," he said, his voice low and controlled. "If you don't trust me, you can tie me up again, if you want."

"You don't listen very well, do you?" Warden sighed. "But you never did, did you? You don't have permission to talk. And you don't have permission to have opinions. About anything." He touched the cattle prod against his prisoner's ribs, eliciting a smothered cry and a return to enfeebled lack of coordination. "Much better," he said. He replaced the device on the dash and turned in his seat. "This will actually feel rather pleasant, or so I'm told," he said. He shoved the sleeve of the lawyer's nylon jacket upward and slid the needle into his unresisting arm.

The lawyer watched the injection with mournful eyes. "My family," he breathed. "Hurry."

Warden beamed. "There _is_ no device," he assured his captive. "Not unless you've pissed off someone who's a lot less civilized than I am." He rolled his eyes. "Bombing innocent people? Little old _moi?_ I mean, _really_." He watched the last of the liquid drain from the hypodermic, then withdrew it carefully.

The lawyer stared at him mutely with eyes already beginning to lose focus. "I know," Warden said with a light chortle. "And you thought you were such a great interrogator, could spot a lie-on-the-fly from fifty paces. I guess you can chalk this one up as a learning experience."

The lawyer started to wrestle weakly with his seatbelt.

"Do we really need another teachable moment here?" Warden asked, reaching out toward the shock device on the dashboard. The lawyer ignored him. Warden touched it lightly against the man's forearm. The prisoner jerked and shuddered and slid sideways with a faint protest.

Warden watched him with a mixture of disappointment and contempt. _You'd think an FBI goon would be sharper than that, tougher than that, but, hell, in the end a lawyer's just a lawyer._

  
  


  
  


  
  


 


	2. A Strong Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written with Esperanta, who keeps my prose typo-free and boasts an imagination more twisted than my own. The only things we created were this creepy little world and a few OCs.

**Solitary 5.0**

**Chapter Two**

**A Strong Man**

**  
**

He liked Karl Kraus, the Austrian journalist and aphorist. He had read two of his books while he was in prison. Sure, he was glib…but that was the nature of an aphorism, wasn't it?

_OK, what's that thing that Kraus says about how a weak man has doubts before he makes his decision and a strong man has them afterwards? He got that right, didn't he? Only I'm more scared silly…._

The man who called himself Warden piloted the pickup slowly along southbound suburban streets, keeping pace with vehicles around him, conscious always of his identity as a member of the pack, the identity that would prevent him from standing out.

After a few blocks he turned in at the parking lot of a big box electronics store. He cruised up and down the rows until he found a parking space between two larger vans. Maneuvering the pickup between the vans and sliding the transmission into Park, he released the catch on his seatbelt, sat back, and drew his first full breath since he left the lawyer's house.

A strong man.

 _Ein starker Mann_ , as Kraus would call him….

He reached behind him to the gym bag he had brought solely because he wanted to ingrain the habit, and not because he planned an abduction that day. He fished around among its contents until he found the blue hard-shelled container, much like a glasses case, only larger, nearly eight inches square. Inside this case he kept all of his fake facial hair. He had been collecting the stuff for years now, one of the few true indulgences in his carefully restricted life. Glaring at himself in his rear-view mirror, he peeled away the extravagant muttonchop whiskers, a perfect match for his hair, with a touch of gray for extra verisimilitude. He replaced them in the case beside the eyebrows he had chosen not to wear.

Once he had disposed of them and the enormous glasses, he took a comb from his pocket. Peering into the rear-view mirror, he parted his hair on the left and combed the idiotic-looking bangs back tidily. He observed his new look critically. Now, he looked more like a salesman or an accountant than a hirsute would-be terrorist.

He turned in his seat and pulled the cord out of his back pocket. He had never used anything like the tranquilizer before. He had intended to practice giving injections, to study the effect of the drug. To look it up, for God's sake, in the PDR or at least online. What if the guy died?

But the lawyer was still breathing. Snoring a little, actually, head thrown back, limp against the window.

_Right, but if he wakes up, who knows what kind of FBI tricks he has learned? I can't watch him and drive too._

Warden turned even further in his seat. As quickly and efficiently as he could, he relieved the lawyer of his nylon jacket and draped it over the back of the seat. Pity the jacket didn't have the FBI initials on it, too, like the billed cap that was still lying on the floor of the garage. Boy, what a great souvenir that would have been—but, no. It wasn't about souvenirs.

It was about _justice_.

He tied the man's hands together with the length of cord, then secured them to his upper legs. He draped the jacket back over his prisoner's lap and chest, covering his hands. Then he groped around behind the seat until he found a—well, it was meant as a pad for the seat of a chair, but it could serve as a pillow. He wedged it between the window and the lawyer's cheek. God, but he hated to touch the man! He could _smell_ the evil on him, but it had to be done.

He settled back in his seat, rebuckled his safety belt, and pushed the gearshift back into Drive.

**~ o ~**

Penelope did not immediately recognize the Caller ID, so she just said, "Garcia, Analysis."

"Agent Garcia," a vaguely familiar female voice said in a low and confidential tone, "It's Jess Brooks, Aaron Hotchner's sister-in-law."

"Oh, yes, of course—"

"This will probably sound silly, and I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation, but I'm here with Jack at Aaron's, and Aaron isn't here. They were going to camp in the back yard, Aaron and Jack were, but Aaron is just gone. The van is here and the garage door is—" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Jack will be back from the kitchen in a second and I don't want to alarm him, but the van is here and the garage door is wide open and Aaron's cell phone is on the floor with no battery in it. And that just isn't like Aaron."

Garcia frowned and touched her earpiece as though a closer connection would give her more information. "How long ago was this?"

"I don't know. We just got here, and…oh, hi, sweetie!" Jess's tone shifted as she addressed her nephew. "What kind did you decide on? Banana-strawberry? Oh, _yum_! Can you go back and get me a blueberry? And a spoon of my very own? Awesome!" Again her voice dropped into confidentiality. "I was out in the yard, and the tent and tarp are on the picnic table and they're pretty wet, so my guess is it's been fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe even half an hour."

"We're on it," Garcia said, trying to keep the grimness and tension out of her own voice. "You just stay calm and take care of the little guy. I'll have an army there before you know it."

_And the Navy. And the Marines. And the fucking Power-Puff Girls. Everyone…._

**~ o ~**

" _What?_ " Derek Morgan fairly shouted into the phone. "Oh, man, this can't be happening again! On my way—have the rest of the team meet me there. Garcia, hang with me a minute, OK?"

Abandoning his nearly full shopping cart, he pushed his way through the gridlocked evening checkout line, oblivious to the annoyed glares of the shoppers he jostled in passing. In a matter of moments he'd sprinted across the front of the store and was out the door, running to his car.

As he climbed into the SUV, he tossed his cell phone into the passenger seat, letting the Bluetooth link inside take over the call once the motor roared to life.

"Give me the address, Baby Girl. I know Hotch's new place isn't that far from his old one, but I haven't been out there yet." Actually, he knew, none of them had. If Hotch'd been private before Foyet, he was positively off the charts now. No house-warming this time, and rumor had it he'd bent the rules far enough to run a thorough background check on every adult male within three blocks before he'd committed to the closing. _Fool me once…._

"8723 Westbrook Heights, Arlington, sending to your GPS now," came Garcia's voice over the speaker. The dash map lit up, one red dot indicating his present location, another his destination, with a yellow line indicating the fastest route between the two points. "I texted the others, flash alert, responses from all but Ros—no, wait, he's on board now too." No teasing or lightheartedness in her tone this time—the Foyet nightmare was far too fresh in all of their memories.

Morgan threw the Pilot into reverse, nimbly avoiding a heavy Hispanic woman walking past, and peeled out of the parking lot. "And notify the—"

"—local P.D.," Garcia finished the sentence for him. "Done. They're putting out an APB on Hotch, and a BOLO for an older-model blue truck with a camper cap."

"Truck? Camper cap?"

"I haven't been sitting on my hands, Morgan; I'm getting direct video feed from the security company Hotch uses. He showed up on the passenger side of an older-model blue truck, correction, blue Ford F-150 with a gray camper cap."

"You are amazing, girl. I just thank God we've got you in our corner." He squeaked through the tail-end of a yellow light and gunned the SUV up the on-ramp to the Custis Parkway. Fortunately, Morgan lived in Falls Church, only about five miles from the quiet Arlington district that was now home for the second time to his boss.

Uncharacteristically, Garcia failed to even acknowledge his compliment. _Man, she's really in the zone. Put one of us in danger and she zeroes in on task like a sniper._

"Better send out a team of evidence techs, too, just to be on the safe side. I'll call you back as soon as we're all on scene and have something to report." He thumbed the "off" button and struggled to focus his attention on the road.

_Jesus Christ Almighty, this is crazy. This just can't be happening._

**~ o ~**

The rain was falling again, splattering fat droplets with ever-increasing regularity against his windshield. Warden peered between them, searching for the logo of the apartment complex he had scouted out three weeks before. His idea then had been to use the parking lot as a staging area, because it was adjacent to the car wash he had identified as probably the best place to grab the lawyer, and because it had exits in three directions, onto three separate streets.

 _Well, won't need the car wash now_ …

There it was, Dartmouth in the Cedars, a midmarket scattering of three-story buildings with cream-colored brick walls, lots of half-dead trees, and consistently bad line-of-sight between the units and their assigned Dumpsters, which he supposed was meant to be a good thing: no trash receptacles interfering with the residents' views.

He steered the pickup over to the worst-located grouping of Dumpsters in the bunch and parked. Climbing out, he walked to the rear, slipping a pair of inexpensive driving gloves onto his hands as he did so. With four quick movements he collapsed the fake camper cap that was constructed from six pieces of plastic-coated particle board.

He felt a tiny pang of regret as he disposed of the pieces. That particular bit of camouflage had taken him nearly a month to create—he was not much of an artsy-craftsy sort of guy—but he no longer needed it. Like the FBI billed cap, it was just one other thing that had to be jettisoned to ensure success of the main operation.

Three large potted palms lay on their sides in the truck bed. Warden lifted them upright and secured them in position, draping their pots with tarps and utility rags. He peeled the stick-on Michigan tags from the truck's rear, exposing the Pennsylvania plate. He balled up the peeled plastic tape and pitched it into the Dumpster with the discarded plate and the particle board.

Finally he groped around under the tarps and located magnetic signs advertising a fictional Altoona landscaping company. He affixed one to each of the truck's doors, then he stripped off first his gloves, and then the brown corduroy shirt, exposing a mottled pink tee shirt with the logo of an Atlantic City casino. A billed cap, the imaginary landscaper's logo embroidered on the front—needlecraft _was_ included in Warden's skillset; he had spent several satisfying evenings in his recliner in front of the TV with his sewing supplies beside him and the History Channel on the screen—and his new look was complete. There was another cap as well, one that matched his own. He carried it back to the cab.

The lawyer appeared not to have moved while he was occupied, but Warden did not intend to take any chances. Slipping his keys between his knuckles so that the metal tips protruded, he leaned in from the driver's side and poked at the lawyer's ribs a couple times, not hard, but firmly.

Nothing but a mechanical exhalation escaped him. He was still out cold. Warden arranged the second cap on the lawyer's head, tilted forward and to the side as if to facilitate napping. He admired his results for a few seconds, then turned around and buckled up.

He started up the engine again and exited the parking lot on another side, merging smoothly into northbound traffic this time.

**~ o ~**

Morgan, Rossi, and Reid stood in Aaron Hotchner's driveway, arms crossed and expressions grave as the high school girl across the street repeated her story.

"I saw, like, everything," she said, her eyes still wide with excitement. "I saw Mr. Hotchner come out of his garage with a big bunch of stuff, and the guy with the truck, he was driving down the street slow, like he's looking for an address or something, and then I guess that the guy in the truck waved at Mr. Hotchner, Mr. Hotchner nodded back, like saying 'Hi,' you know? Then Mr. Hotchner went around to his back yard, and the guy in the truck went over there," and she nodded nervously at the house next door, "where the Martinez family used to live, you know?

"And like a couple minutes later the guy with the truck pulled into the Martinezes' driveway and he and Mr. Hotchner got in the truck. And it looked to me like Mr. Hotchner was walking kinda wobbly, and I thought maybe he got sick, you know? And the guy who was driving the truck, he was smiling, he seemed real nice, like maybe he was helping him? Like maybe Mr. Hotchner got sick or injured and he was gonna run him over to Urgent Care or something?"

Morgan tried not to glare at the girl. "And you saw no weapons?"

"Huh? No! The guy from the truck, he had a 'do on him like a total dork, you know? But I didn't see any weapons at all. He just had, like, a stick, you know? I thought maybe he was picking stuff up on the grounds at the Martinez place."

"A stick?" Rossi echoed. "How did he hold it?"

The girl shrugged helplessly. "Like a stick, you know? Nothing special." She mimed holding something low in her right hand, near her hip, holding it more like a knife than like a stick or a hand gun. She held her hands ten inches apart. "It was about like _yea_ , you know, just a plain old brown stick."

They thanked her and sent her back to the homework she had been doing on her family's screened-in porch.

"It just doesn't make sense," Rossi rumbled. "Aaron is an insanely high-risk target for one single UNSUB to take on. A senior federal agent, ex-SWAT, armed and observant—"

"Not armed," Morgan said. "I just got his combination. Both weapons are in his gun safe. And Garcia's techs have confirmed that nobody named Aaron Hotchner has visited any clinic or emergency room. No middle-aged white John Does, either."

Reid continued to watch the teenaged girl cross her parents' lawn. "Where are we on getting their security footage?" he said, nodding toward the girl's house.

Morgan glanced over his shoulder at the property in question. "Should have it soon. Husband isn't home, wife wasn't sure who to call or how to go about getting it."

Rossi refolded his arms. "OK, look, I'm the UNSUB. I know that Aaron's likely to be missed immediately—which he was—and a guarantee that the full force of the Bureau is gonna come down hard to get him back." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Could this guy do anything else wrong? But he pulls it off—" He shook his head. "And practically nobody knew we were home from Wisconsin yet, let alone that Hotch was planning to camp out with Jack tonight. And one guy took him out? One single guy?"

"Nobody saw a second person, let alone a second vehicle," Reid confirmed. "Prentiss and I have been all up and down the street." He nodded toward the curb. "He was parked over there, almost exactly where JJ's car is parked now.

"Everyone who remembers seeing it agrees it was a dark pickup with a light-colored camper cap. From there on, we start getting into 'eye-witless' territory. It was black, it was blue, it was dark blue. The cap was gray, it was silver, it was white. But everyone agrees it was only the one white guy, thin, in a brown shirt or brown short jacket and blue jeans. But he was tall, he was short, he was medium. His hair was brown or blond or gray. He had a beard or he had a beard and a mustache, or he had big bushy sideburns. Everyone agrees that he wore black-rimmed glasses."

"But with no weapon…do you think he made a threat, maybe to Jack, or the neighborhood, or—" Morgan asked. He didn't finish the thought. If someone had threatened the Team, it would have hit Hotch as hard as threatening his blood family.

"Wouldn't surprise me in the least," Rossi grumbled. "That would certainly give him an edge, trying to force compliance out of Aaron—"

"Got it!" JJ said, jogging out of the house with her iPad engaged. "Garcia's shooting it over to Kevin for further analysis, but here's the truck—" She turned the iPad and displayed a Ford F-150 of uncertain vintage, but probably from the mid-nineties. The camper cap was gray and silver. "And here's our UNSUB—" She flipped to a closeup of the truck showing its driver, a man of middle age wearing a corduroy shirt in a brown so light it was almost butterscotch. He wore heavy black-rimmed glasses and sported a luxuriant set of muttonchop whiskers.

As they watched the security camera footage, the man drove down the street twice, looking up and down the block. He checked his watch, consulted some papers that he picked up from beside him on the seat. He peered up into the sky as though wondering when the light rain would stop. At no time did the man demonstrate any particular interest in the Hotchner residence. If anything, he paid more attention to the vacant house next door. He seemed more like some random contractor preparing for a meeting with a potential customer than anything else.

"He's good," Morgan conceded. "Got to be a pro. Any luck yet getting the footage from the house next door?"

Jareau's shoulders lifted, then dropped. "We located the owner's representative, local lawyer, says the system is only intended to identify vandals, so a limited field of vision, and it only takes a few frames every minute or so. He's on his way down to unlock the place and give us access."

The four of them exchanged glances. If the victim had been someone else, if Aaron Hotchner had been there as part of their team, he would have had the attorney sweet-talked into giving them instant access half an hour ago.

Morgan's phone sounded. He glanced at the faceplate. "You're on speaker, Baby Girl."

"Kevin has worked his magic," Garcia said. "It's a 1997 Ford F-150, Michigan tags," and she read off the number. "Tags belonged to the late Ramona Blankenship of Adrian, Michigan, and supposed to be on a 2006 Ford F-250. Ms Blankenship died last winter, carbon monoxide poisoning. Her daughter in Cleveland inherited the truck—hang on, getting input from Sonia, we have every tech in the building on this, I swear—Ms Blankenship's daughter still owns the truck, although it has Ohio tags now. She says the Michigan plate is still in her garage. She just went outside and checked.

"Within eight minutes of the abduction, I have that vehicle showing on six southbound traffic cameras, then it drops out of sight. Anderson is working with Virginia State Police to blanket the areas…."

As she spoke, a black hybrid pulled into the adjacent driveway. An elderly man in a suit and tie emerged and waved uncertainly at them.

"FBI?" he called.

Four sets of creds came out, not that he could read them at that distance. "Steinvogel," he told them. "I'll pull the security cam footage for you."

Morgan turned moodily back toward the interior of the Hotchner garage, where Aaron's green soccer-dad minivan stood. He looked at the dusty floor and at the disturbances in the dust, disturbances that Bureau techs were photographing with several alternative light sources in hopes that more data would become visible.

He turned again to his teammates. "If this was a pro," he said, "then this is not a one-man operation. And you know what that means."

Reid nodded, always eager to answer any question, even one for which everyone already knew the answer. "A criminal enterprise," he replied. "An almost unlimited number of extra vehicles, even decoy vehicles. On the plus side, a criminal enterprise pays its participants, and paid participants can be turned. We just have to figure out which criminal enterprise Hotch has angered, and we're on our way to a solution." He glanced back and forth among his comrades. "And while it can be argued that the Bureau annoys every criminal enterprise, the BAU has a narrower window of criminal enterprises it interferes with. Most of our targets are individuals."

"Potentially something," Gus the evidence tech announced. Gus was constitutionally the kind of tech who doubted everything, who took nothing for granted. From Gus, "potentially" was practically "for damn sure."

"What have you got?" Rossi asked.

"Couple things. The cell phone was wiped but it still has some partials on it. Lab already has it. And this—" Gus displayed a tiny piece of metal on the palm of his gloved hand. "Battery for the cell, found it over there, practically under the left rear tire. Probably too small for a useful print, but you just never know. And then there's this."

Gus gestured at the dusty poured concrete floor, then called up some alternative-light-source images on his digital camera. "See here? Hotchner's a twelve-and-a-half, we've got his shoe prints all over here, but we've also got four full prints and seven partials of a work boot, size nine. It's a reasonable inference, given the way it appears both over and under Hotchner's prints, that it's from our guy's feet."

Every little bit helped. "Brand name of workboots?" Morgan asked. He could see no footprints at all with the naked eye, but he knew what kind of magic the techs could do with different types and angles of light.

Gus shrugged. "I shot it over to the database guys," he said. "Should have something in the next couple minutes."

The UNSUB might be good, might be a pro, but it was unlikely he would think to change his footwear. Nobody could think of everything.

Reid studied the floor of the garage. "The cell was there?" he murmured, indicating a spot on the floor. "And the battery there?" He squatted in the driveway and studied angles. "I think the UNSUB threw it," he said. "I don't see how it could have wound up there naturally." He squinted up into the high-intensity lights the crime scene techs had set up.

**~ o ~**

Hotchner's sense of hearing returned before anything else: the sound of windshield wipers on high speed, the thundering of rain on the roof of the vehicle as it bounced along a poorly maintained surface.

 _Truck. Blue truck._ The whole lunatic situation came back to him, a piece at a time. The man with the glasses and whiskers, the man with the needle and the cattle prod. The man who had threatened to hurt Jack and Jess. Who had lied to him. Or so he said.

He opened his right eye. His vision was partially blocked by a pillow of some kind that had been inserted between his cheek and the window. Yellow floral something. Ahead was a two-lane rural road, barely visible as dusk descended; the truck's wipers were no match for this downpour.

He took stock carefully, slowly. His jacket was gone—no, it was arranged across the front of his body. His hands were restrained. He tried to move them; they seemed to be fastened to his thighs. He still had his hat. No, wait—he tried to roll his right eye upward and to the side without moving the rest of his face. Probably thanks to lingering effects of the sedative he'd been given, it was trickier than he'd thought it would be—nope, the bill of the cap was gray-blue, not the deep navy of his FBI cap.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," said that annoyingly prissy voice. "Let me just pull over, and I'll help you get back to sleep."

He thought that he had moved only slightly and very carefully. Apparently as he awakened, his breathing pattern had changed, and his captor had noticed it. But, no. How could he have heard it over the hammering of the rain, the frantic _chick-chock-chick_ of the wiper blades?

"You jerked when you woke up," the UNSUB informed him, as if he had read his mind.

 _Control freak_ , he reminded himself. _Freak, period. Said I couldn't talk without permission. No sense in trying to fake still being asleep. Might as well do this on his terms._

He turned to confront his captor and was surprised to see that the heavy glasses and extravagant sideburns were gone and his hair was combed differently, changing the general shape of his face. It wouldn't fool Garcia's facial recognition software, but it could fool human witnesses.

_He is clever, organized, educated. Remember this. Use this._

Aaron took a slow, steadying breath, then said, "May I speak?"

"Well, good for you!" his captor replied, almost jovially. "You remembered the rules! Certainly you may, at least for a moment."

Several questions were topmost in his mind. He wondered how many he would get away with asking. "Where is my son?" he asked.

"I have no idea," the UNSUB told him. "The last time I saw him was last weekend when you and he did the grocery shopping."

His words took Aaron's breath away, but he tried to keep his tone casual. "How long have you been following me?"

The UNSUB smirked. "Oh, off and on, for the better part of a year. Intensively, just since April." When Aaron looked at him the smirk broadened into a maddening Cheshire-Cat smugness. "I gather that spotting surveillance isn't your specialty, either."

Hotchner said nothing.

"Then the two of you went to the library and the Olive Garden with your sister-in-law and her current boyfriend. Bill Hammer, is it? Hummer? The one who just had the cast removed from his right wrist? He must be the Olive Garden fan, because when he isn't with you, you usually go to Red Lobster."

Aaron inhaled slowly and let air out. The guy's name was Hamrick, and Aaron had checked him out from here to next Thursday because he no longer trusted anyone. And, yeah: Bill hated Red Lobster so much that he always offered to pick up the tab if they would go to the Olive Garden instead.

_How could I possibly have missed this guy trailing around after me?_

"But he's all right?" he asked, still desperate for reassurance.

His captor seemed to snicker. "Little Jack? Unless in your absence he has Captain-Crunched himself into a sugar coma," he replied. "Or his auntie's boyfriend is as thuggish as he looks. But they are in no danger from me. You have a very sharp little boy there. Polite. Observant."

As a father, Aaron felt his heart swell to hear his son praised in those terms. As a prisoner, he felt a stab of fear at the _observant_ part of the assessment. Did his captor consider Jack some kind of danger?

And then there was the creepiness of _polite_ and its implications.

_This bastard has spoken to my son?_

Before he could formulate a way to ask yet again about his son's well-being, his captor said, "I don't hurt innocents. Your son is safe with his Auntie Jessica, and they have probably long since discovered your absence and called for help. The cavalry has surely descended by now. Your Team, your merry little federal band of obsessives—ah, here we go…."

The truck bounced into a gravel driveway that Aaron had not even seen through the dark and the storm, and came to a halt in front of a squat white-washed building, probably a long-defunct gas station. While there were no longer any pumps on its small concrete apron, a rusty metal Pennzoil sign flapped noisily in the wind above a door whose glass panels had long since been replaced with plywood.

The man behind the wheel of the truck flicked on the overhead light. "Let me help you get back to sleep," he said again, his voice soothing.

"I don't want to go back to sleep," Aaron said, and he sounded petulant even to himself. He tugged uselessly on his bonds. "Who are you?" he asked. "What do you want with me?"

His abductor reached down between his legs for something under the seat. He withdrew a small case, which Hotchner belatedly recognized as the case where the drugs had been kept. "You may call me Warden," he said. "What do I want with you? Why, only for you to pay for your crimes." He filled the hypodermic and turned slightly in his bucket seat. "Hold still now." He jammed the needle into Aaron's arm and depressed the plunger. "And for now I need to you to shut up and go back to sleep. We have a long journey ahead of us."

Hotchner tried to fight the drug although he knew it was a pointless effort. Within just a few seconds the world had started going warm and gray and fuzzy. He tried to say something, he wasn't sure what, and he drifted back into unconsciousness.

 


	3. Rising Only to fall

  
  


**Solitary 5.0**

**Chapter Three**

**Rising Only to Fall**

**  
**

Derek Morgan stood gloomily under the overhang of Aaron Hotchner's garage, watching the rain destroy any little bit of trace evidence that they might have missed on the driveway and in the grass. He was tired of one lead after another turning to crap.

The identifiable friction ridges on the phone and the battery were Hotch's. There were a few partials so small that they were impossible to match to any individual. They could even be Hotch's, too, for all the lab analysts could say.

The work boot lead seemed to have petered out, too. That style boot was manufactured by the tens of thousands in the Philippines and sold in mass quantities under four different brand names in discount houses all across the US and Mexico. The most common sizes were 9, 9½, and 10. The treads had been pretty worn; they were not a recent purchase. Trying to pinpoint a buyer was an impossible task without more information.

Every time he glanced to his left, he saw the driveway of the adjacent house, the vacant house that had once belonged to the Martinez family. In his mind's eye he saw that freaking blue truck parked there, and his mind then helpfully supplied a photo from the security camera on that property: the UNSUB, all goofy bangs, geek glasses, and muttonchop sideburns, flicking his fingers against a hypodermic needle. The look on Aaron Hotchner's face had been one of pure apprehension.

_They wanted him alive, whoever they were._

_Did he recognize this man? Does he know who took him? What do they want with him?_

His phone sounded. He glanced at the faceplate, and said "Ma'am," to Section Chief Erin Strauss.

"I won't keep you, Agent Morgan," she said briskly. "I know you need to keep this line open. I just needed to say, for the record, that in Agent Hotchner's absence you are Unit Chief in every sense of the word. You already knew that, of course, and you've been acting in that role, but this makes it official."

"Thank you, ma'am," he replied without enthusiasm.

"And something else you need to hear from me even though you already know it, just to dot all the I's and cross all the T's—whatever you need from Bureau resources, it's yours. Keep me in the loop, Agent Morgan. We need to bring Agent Hotchner home."

He thanked her and closed off the call.

Almost immediately his phone buzzed again. He thumbed it on and said, "Give me some good news, Garcia."

"You ask and I deliver," the tech analyst replied. "Putting the search out to the public is paying off. A woman who lives at Dartmouth in the Cedars, that's an apartment complex south of—"

"I know it," Morgan interrupted.

"Anyway she says that she saw a blue truck with a silver camper cap and Michigan plates enter their parking lot at around 4:15, 4:20. She noticed it because her niece—this is significant—her niece has a truck a lot like that one and is having marital troubles. She took a careful look, because she was hoping that her niece had come to her senses and left the bastard, although she didn't phrase it quite that way. When she saw the plate it was the wrong color. It looked like her grandson's plate. He lives in Michigan."

For the first time in hours, Morgan felt like there was something to inhale over. "Then we have to—"

"Done, my love. Virginia staties are sending an unmarked to drive through the parking lot as we speak." She sighed. "And they're responding already. No such truck parked there. Want the area closed off?"

"And every techie we've got," Morgan growled. "Every damn one. Have the LEOs cordon the place off to preserve whatever's left of the scene. Get Anderson to liaise with their security people, see what we can get off their cameras."

"As we speak, sir."

**~ o ~**

Everything went to hell when he pulled into the field behind a farmhouse located a few miles east of Gettysburg. To begin with, before the rain abated here, it had evidently reached torrential proportions. The field that separated him from his own vehicle, a late model sedan, had turned to a sea of muck. There was no way he could safely drive across it. He and his uncooperative captive would have to traverse it on foot.

He shut off the ignition and looked to his right, to the bound man showing signs of returning consciousness beside him. Warden had refrained from blindfolding him for most of this portion of the drive. The highway here was a busy one; it would not do for bored anklebiters staring glumly out the windows of passing minivans to call to their parents, _Look,_ _Mommy_ , _that man gots a blindfold on!_

For all he knew, the whole world was looking for his truck, although he hoped that the old blue truck they sought was one with Michigan plates and a camper cap, not Pennsylvania plates and a trio of potted palms in the truckbed. He resolutely refused to listen to any of the news channels. They would just remind him of his fugitive status, and before he knew it, he would be thinking like a fugitive and acting like a fugitive. The presence of a blindfolded and bound passenger would have nailed his identity.

He nudged his passenger, who uttered a faint groan.

Definitely regaining consciousness.

The advantage to an alert captive was that Warden would not have to wrangle damn near two hundred pounds of dead weight across twenty meters of soupy, sloppy weeds.

The disadvantage was that an alert captive—bigger and heavier than Warden, and trained, according to Warden's research, in all manner of offensive and defensive martial arts; a man long accustomed to combat situations—could easily launch a successful attack. The captive's "escape" at that sort of juncture would be the very least of Warden's worries.

Warden collected his gym bag from the storage area behind the seats. From a small zipper container, he withdrew a heavy elastic bandage and a knife. He cut a three-foot length from the bandage and wound it around his prisoner's head twice, tying it at the back. Then he took the rest of it and wrapped it around the lawyer's torso, securing his upper arms tightly to his body. That would make an attack more difficult, but there was no telling what a desperate man might do in his own defense. He would have to walk, however, so Warden released the catch on the man's seat belt.

_Ah, but now…._

Warden believed himself to be a kind man, a just man. He had never derived any pleasure from inflicting pain on his fellow man. On the contrary, because he had himself suffered so much, he tended to identify with the underdog, the victim. Even his captive.

To a point. There were other people, beloved other people, to consider.

Realizing what he must do, he withdrew the Enforcer from its charger and reversed it in his hands. Gripping his passenger's left forearm to keep it motionless, he raised the butt-end of the Enforcer and brought it down sharply like a baton across the lawyer's knuckles. "That's for Jason," he announced as his captive wheezed in pain from behind clenched teeth.

_Be courageous. When you hesitate, you do nobody any favors, not even your prisoner._

"That's for Ellie," he barked as he struck a second time. "That's for Diana," he concluded, his last blow across already reddened and swelling fingers eliciting a strangled scream.

Yes, it was awful. He was fully aware that fingers are a huge tangled mass of nerve endings, among the most sensitive areas of the body. For a few minutes, the pain would prevent his prisoner from doing anything useful with his hands. Even now he hunched over, his dead-white face a rictus of agony. Warden opened his knife and sliced through the cord attaching the man's hands to his thighs.

He collected everything he had in the front—the charger, the drug case, his prisoner's nylon jacket, everything he had brought and had touched—then climbed out of the truck, the gym bag slung across his right shoulder, the Enforcer in his left hand. He slammed his own door and paused to attach the carrying cord to the Enforcer and slip it around his wrist. He could not risk dropping it just because his hands were wet. He sloshed around the vehicle to the passenger door, which he flung open, then seized the lawyer by his shirt collar and dragged him from his seat. The prisoner staggered, hunching his shoulders against the rain that drizzled down on the both of them.

"Walk," Warden shouted. Maintaining a firm grip on the lawyer's knit golf shirt and pressing the Enforcer meaningfully against the back of his neck, he shoved him in the appropriate direction. "When we get to the car, climb in."

Being a treacherous sonofabitch, of course, the lawyer stopped, doubled over, and spun, with one sweeping motion knocking the Enforcer out of Warden's fingers and head-butting him. The head-butt went wild, glancing off Warden's ribs instead of knocking the breath out of him.

Quivering with outrage, Warden danced backward two paces and fumbled the Enforcer back into his grasp. "Don't try that again," he growled at the lawyer, hoping that he was exactly the kind of idiot whose response would be to do exactly that.

_And thank God I attached the strap to it…._

Alas, the lawyer did not rise to the bait. Instead he also backed up two paces, bending over again and trying to reach the elastic bandage that covered his eyes. Envisioning years of his planning and effort coming to naught because of a scuffle in a muddy field, Warden lunged forward, not even trying to calculate resistance patterns, and jabbed the Enforcer into the lawyer's shoulder.

The lawyer howled, sank to his knees, and then toppled forward and sideways into the soup of weeds and muddy water.

Warden peered at the Enforcer. At some point, probably when he used the thing like a baton, he had pushed the control to its maximum power.

"I don't enjoy hurting you," Warden shouted, his anger just barely contained, "but I by God will not tolerate that kind of defiance." While the lawyer still huddled, panting, in the weeds, Warden rescued his prisoner's landscaper-company billed cap and shoved it into one back pocket of his jeans. Then he took his last pre-cut piece of cord from his other pocket. Moving cautiously, his eyes focused on his captive, he approachedthe lawyer from behind and wrapped the cord around his neck twice, then wrapped it around his own left hand and yanked, hard. "Get up," he commanded. "Don't make me shock you again."

The lawyer began to struggle to his feet.

"That way. Walk," Warden said when the man was fully upright, and shoved the man in the right direction. He let the Enforcer dangle from his wrist and reached into his pocket for his remote key, which he triggered as an auditory cue.

The lawyer jerked at the familiar chirping sound and seemed to correct his path more nearly toward the car. When he arrived at his objective, his damaged fingers fumbled along the side of the vehicle until he located the door handle. He wrestled the door open, then stood there beside it for a moment, as though recognizing the extent to which he was participating in his own captivity. Suddenly his shoulders slumped. He turned his body slightly, lowered his buttocks to the seat, and drew his long legs, one by one, into the foot well.

He then doubled over, breathing heavily. Warden leaned over him, wondering how to get him buckled in without risking some more FBI kung-fu magic. As he did so, he recognized the lawyer's breathing pattern. He recognized the signs of someone trying not to engage his vocal cords, someone trying not to cry out.

Warden had breathed exactly that way sometimes after his father, Waldo, beat him. When the lawyer straightened up, when he squared his shoulders and set his jaw, Warden recognized that, too. Even as a child he had been determined not to let Waldo see his pain and fury. Showing his misery had always sent his father into a black humor, as though the mere suggestion that he might be responsible for his son's suffering outraged him. Waldo had believed, of course, like most evil men, that he was a good man; a just man.

Warden was not sure how he felt about the parallels he was seeing. He was no Waldo—he knew that for a fact—but it was difficult to see the lawyer engaging in the same denial that he had learned as a child.

Still standing in the light rain, Warden pressed the Enforcer against the lawyer's jaw line just to buy himself some time while he figured out how to manage this awkward point.

"May I speak?" the lawyer rasped.

Warden thought this was probably a bad idea, but he was too curious to refuse. "Briefly," he said.

The lawyer's tongue darted out quickly as though moistening his lips, although his face and hair were still dripping wet. "Don't use that." His tone sounded calm and reasonable, rather than pleading.

"What, my Enforcer? You don't want me to use my best, my least damaging weapon?"

The lawyer's tone remained steady although he sounded weary and played out. "Please don't. I won't resist you. To the best of my ability I'll do whatever you tell me to do."

 _He thinks he's negotiating! He thinks that somehow we can exist on the same plane of justice and integrity!_ He stood there for a few seconds, waiting for the deal-breaker, the inevitable _I give you my word. I promise_. He knew first-hand how much—rather, how _little_ —Aaron Hotchner's promises were worth.

But the lawyer said nothing further. No pleading, no further bargaining, and no assurances, false or otherwise. He just sat there, soaked to the skin with filthy water, with random bits of weed sticking to him, with the sodden elastic bandage about his upper arms losing more elasticity by the second and slowly sliding down to his elbows. He faced forward silently with his jaw set and his lips in a tight line. So: Believe him? Or don't believe him? Avoid the risk of an escape attempt, or give his prisoner his first chance to demonstrate obedience? It was almost a pity that he was blindfolded; Warden felt he could have read the man's attitude better if he had seen his eyes.

_Those unforgettable cold, fucking arrogant eyes…._

"Ah," he said. "Like the way you obeyed me back there? When you turned on me?"

Smartass lawyer didn't have an answer to that one. He just lowered his head and sat there.

" _To the best of my ability_ is nothing but weasel words," Warden said. "What if you fail? What if _the best of your ability_ just doesn't cut it?"

A long pause, then the lawyer replied, his voice still steady, "Then I doubt that torturing me will improve my performance."

Warden tapped the lawyer's shoulder. "False logic," he said. "Try to think of it less as an effort to improve your performance than a punishment for failure to do as you were told."

The lawyer nodded slightly and said _OK_ so softly that Warden all but had to read his lips to catch his reply.

Stowing the Enforcer in the back pocket where the cord had been, he yanked the seat belt down from its raised position and pressed the metal tab against the lawyer's bound and battered hands. "Buckle yourself in," he said.

The lawyer fumbled with the tab so long that he had to let it wind itself back up again so he had enough slack to reach the latch, and then it took him several groping tries to engage the lock. When he at last succeeded in his assigned task, he turned and faced forward. His hands were on his lap, his jaw was set and his features were stony. No, _composed_.

In spite of the random droplets still drizzling down occasionally on his billed cap, Warden continued to stand by the open door to the car, observing his captive, then he unwrapped the cord that encircled the lawyer's throat from around his hand and wound it instead around the headrest and knotted it tightly in back.

"There," he said. "That'll help you keep your head, like your lap tray, in the upright position."

Warden straightened up and slammed the passenger door. He walked around the front of the car, his own car, his personal 2010 Kia, flung the gym bag into the back seat, then climbed in on the driver's side. Rather than starting the car right away, however, he turned in his seat and considered his prisoner.

The lawyer sat still except for an occasional twitch of his shoulders or his biceps. Warden thought that possibly the twitches were artifacts from the shocks he had endured from the cattle prod, but he didn't know for sure. He would have to check it online as soon as he had wireless access again.

Four hours ago Warden had just been a cautious, meticulous geek with a free weekend, doing a quick surveillance, one of numerous rehearsals meant to be preparatory to abducting the lawyer.

_In June. At the car wash._

And now look at him: He was the proud owner of a faithless sleazeball of a lawyer, bound and blindfolded, completely at his, Warden's, mercy. He had even beaten a man bigger, younger, more fit, and better trained than he was—beaten him at his own game.

Actually, Warden was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He did not experience that emotion often. He intended to enjoy it insofar as it didn't interfere with the task at hand. He turned a bit further to his right. "So," he said conversationally. "You say you won't try to escape."

The lawyer's head rose and his nostrils flared slightly. "I won't resist you," he repeated, still in that calm, gravelly voice. "If you tell me to do something, I'll do it to the best of my ability. If I see an opportunity to escape, I can't promise you that I won't try to take it."

Warden arched an eyebrow—a gesture lost on his captive, of course—and smiled. "And you're telling me that? You're admitting that?"

His prisoner still faced forward. "Would you prefer that I lie?" he murmured.

Warden thought about that. Although he was often the smartest guy in the room, he was accustomed to working around other very intelligent people, to the kind of intellect that would cut through the crap of everyday discourse. And he had known going into this that his prey was himself an exceptionally intelligent man. What surprised him, what threw him off his game, was that the lawyer neither cringed nor cursed. He had shown fear and anger at the outset, but now he seemed if not serene, at least accepting. They probably taught self-control at Quantico, but this was a voluntary silence. Thoughtful. _Dignified_. He was pretty sure the FBI didn't teach that.

"You stole five years of my life," Warden informed him. "And now I intend to take five years of yours. Are you afraid?"

The lawyer turned blindly toward him. Not all the way: If the blindfold were missing, he would have been staring somewhere over the steering wheel. "Does it matter?" he asked, his face still devoid of expression.

" _Should_ it matter?" Warden replied. _Right, getting all Socratic with your prisoner, way to go, fella …_

The lawyer rolled his shoulders and stiffened his spine for a moment as though relieving pressure on strained back muscles. He shivered slightly, almost certainly from the cold, and not from fear. "Would you prefer for me to be afraid?" he asked. "Would you _like_ for me to be afraid?"

Interesting way to express it, giving no contextual clues as to whether he actually did feel any fear. By this point his other prisoner, his other lawyer, who had suffered far less than this man, had been quivering so hard in terror that he could barely speak, and had been babbling frantically, trying to bargain with him.

This one just sounded like a lawyer engaged in preliminary negotiations.

_I have allowed him to take control. I have handed over the power to him by having a conversation with him._

"We're done," Warden said sharply. "You no longer have permission to speak."

The lawyer nodded his understanding and faced forward again.

Warden shoved his key into the ignition and turned it harder than he needed to.

**~ o ~**

Emily Prentiss knelt among a sea of storage boxes in Aaron Hotchner's spare bedroom, feeling like a creep. Going through a dead person's things, constructing a profile of a victim, was icky enough. It was worse when you were rummaging through the secrets of someone who was—or so they all hoped—still out there, still alive. When it was someone you knew, someone you cared about, well, that was a whole 'nother dimension of creepy.

It had to be done, however, on the admittedly unlikely chance that this UNSUB, who had no official FBI name yet other than "Furface," which was what Rossi called him, came not from the activities of the BAU, but from Hotch's personal life or his past before the Bureau.

So far, other than what had to be almost every drawing that Jack had ever made, a wedding album, and a shoebox full of love letters from Haley when they were at separate universities, all she had to show for her efforts was that Haley's father had taken a dislike to Aaron and had initially objected to the marriage. He had come around later, obviously; she remembered him from Jack's christening. He thought the world of his son-in-law. That one was a dead end, anyway.

"Some of his law school colleagues didn't care for Aaron," Rossi said from his own pile of Hotchner memorabilia near the open louvered closet doors. "A little late and a little drastic to abduct him because back in—" He turned something over and checked the date. "In 'eighty-seven he was, and I quote, 'an arrogant asshole.'"

Prentiss stared. "Why on earth would he keep something like that?"

Rossi gave one of his gentle smiles. "I've known him for almost twenty years, probably know him better than anyone other than Haley ever did, and he's still something of a closed book to me. He's always held a lot of himself back." He sat back on his heels and chewed his lower lip. "I have no proof on this, but I have reason to suspect that he confided things to Gideon that he later regretted telling him. Gideon could be…pretty manipulative."

Prentiss nodded agreement, then an unpleasant thought hit her. "Should we consider Jason a suspect?"

Rossi grimaced. "Even though I know you're kidding—or I hope you're kidding, anyway—let's keep him on the list, way, way down at the bottom, but on there, just in case."

Emily chewed her own lip in dismay. They had to be pretty damn desperate if they were counting Jason Gideon.

Rossi's phone sounded, and he said into it, "Whatcha got?" After a few seconds of listening, he said, "So far we got nothing here. We have a few more boxes to go through, then we're done. Where do you want us to go from here?"

When he signed off, he sighed deeply. "The camper cap was a phony. They found it in pieces in a Dumpster, along with the Michigan plate and the brown corduroy shirt. They're shipping everything to the labs, hoping for fingerprints, maybe even a DNA profile from the underarms on the shirt."

"Nothing impulsive about this at all, was there?" she whispered.

Rossi shook his head. "This isn't good. We need a break, and we need it now." He pitched the _arrogant asshole_ greetingcard into the depths of the closet and sat back on his heels. "Soon as we're done here, Morgan wants us back at the office, to look at Reid's timeline, maybe give it some fresh eyes."

Prentiss nodded.

_I hope somebody has some new ideas, 'cause I'm completely at a loss here._

_Where the hell are you, Hotch?_

 


	4. A First Analysis

 

**Solitary 5.0**

**Chapter Four**

**A First Analysis  
**

 

Warden, suddenly solicitous, had toweled Aaron's hair dry. He had then tucked Aaron's jacket around his upper body like a blanket and was running the heat in the sedan on High.

This conspired, along with the pain and stress that had sapped his energy, to tempt Hotchner to fall asleep. Even the symphony playing on Warden's expensive sound system acted as a lullaby of sorts, making it even harder to concentrate on the confusing jumble of facts that he had managed to acquire so far.

First, the potentially most telling—and most troubling—was the whole _That's for Jason, that's for Elle_ thing. Try as he might, Aaron kept associating the names with Jason Gideon and Elle Greenaway. At the moment, he saw no reasonable alternative to that interpretation, although why Warden would want to beat him on his hands while invoking those names was another question, and one for which he had no answer. Maybe when his head had cleared a little more it would make more sense. And who the hell was Diana?

Warden might be highly organized, but he seemed to be playing some parts of this abduction by ear. He had tied and re-tied Hotchner three different ways now, the most recent after he loosened some cords so Aaron could sit sideways, his feet on the gravel shoulder of the road, and urinate blindly out into the weeds just beyond the shoulder. Warden had removed the elastic bandage that encircled his body, leaving his bound hands free to move up and down. As a consequence, Aaron now had the ability to scratch his chin and to fiddle with the way the seat belt rested against his torso.

He could, if he so chose, reach up and peel the blindfold off his head, and that sometimes tempted him. However, he decided it was unlikely he would see anything useful in whatever brief window of time elapsed between his raising the blindfold and Warden jamming the fucking Enforcer into his ribs. He wanted no part of the Enforcer. He knew he had a reputation for stoicism among his team members, yet there was actually a fairly short list of things he would _not_ do to avoid severe pain—and thanks to the Enforcer, the list was getting shorter by the minute.

At least he had a general sense of the passage of time now. In some ways, Aaron Hotchner's musical tastes were fairly unsophisticated, but he recognized classical orchestral music when he heard it. By his interpretation, classical orchestral music that seemed to go on forever was probably a symphony. His father had owned a collection of symphonies on vinyl that he never seemed to play (otherwise Aaron might have recognized whatever it was that Warden was playing, other than that he was fairly sure he had heard some of it in a cartoon a long time ago). Each album seemed to contain one symphony. Therefore it was reasonable to assume that most symphonies ran somewhere around an hour.

One symphony had concluded. Not long ago, Aaron had heard Warden fiddling with CD covers and another symphony had started.

_So … a little more than an hour since the nightmare in the rain, when for a few seconds he had been so close to escape._

Warden: Older than he had appeared when Aaron first got a look at him. Deep lines between his eyes had been hidden by the dark rims of the glasses. His eyes were mournful and his hair had more gray in it than had initially been obvious. Wrinkles on his neck, too. His voice was not so much annoyingly prissy as it was annoyingly precise, each word enunciated with clarity and an absence of regional accent.

Warden was, Aaron suspected, a Midwestern school teacher. Warden questioned, exhorted, explained, and challenged. If Hotchner had to specify the level, he would say high school or community college—even a combination, a high school teacher who taught evening courses on the college level. His trace of arrogance hinted at a man defensive because he had never achieved an early goal of professorship at a four-year institution. He loved his profession, though, and his subject matter.

Aaron was still undecided about the subject matter. He leaned toward math and the hard sciences—he envisioned him teaching high school physics—but something about the man's style of argumentation and his enthusiasm about his research kept philosophy and history in the queue of potential specialties.

And I caused him to lose five years of his life, he recalled. So he thinks that he's going to take five years of mine.

The obvious interpretation was that Aaron and the BAU had been responsible for Warden's conviction for some crime. One obvious drawback to that interpretation was that Aaron had a spectacular memory for faces and he could not recall ever seeing Warden before. Another was that the vast preponderance of crimes the BAU was involved with carried sentences way in excess of twenty years. Hotchner was hard-pressed to think of anyone in whose conviction he had been involved who was not doing, at minimum, fifteen-to-life.

Five years previously, Hotch realized, both Jason Gideon and Elle Greenaway had been part of the BAU. Both of them had made mistakes, big ones. Both of them could be callous, almost cruel, to individuals whom they believed to be their UNSUB. Most of the time they were right. Occasionally, they were wrong. Aaron had spent many stressful hours cleaning up after them, apologizing for emotional brutality inflicted on people who had turned out to be victims, not predators. Covering to Strauss for their lapses in judgment. In a couple cases, sucking it up and taking the responsibility—and the discipline—for those lapses.

So…was this yet another instance in which he was taking the fall for something that Jason or Elle had done? Was that what Warden was? Some small fish caught in their net while they were in pursuit of a greater target? That might explain why he didn't recognize Warden's face, but then again, why hold him responsible, and not Greenaway or Gideon?

_Or maybe he already has taken them._

Hotchner frantically tried to remember the last time he had heard from the former profilers, and realized with dismay that it had been years since he had spoken to either. Reid had run into Elle at a crafts fair somewhere, but that had been at least a year ago.

His fingers still ached and throbbed from the blows. There had been powerful outrage behind those assaults, and Warden had definitely said _That's for Jason_ and _That's for Elle_ —implying that Hotch was being punished for injuries _he_ had done to them.

_Me? Really?_

The symphony seemed to feature ponderous strings in a minor key with occasional random bursts of a threatening percussion. _Music to be abducted by_.

He turned his head in the general direction of the man driving the sedan. "May I speak?" he asked.

"Briefly," came the response.

There was no tactful way to phrase it. "Are you sure you have the right guy?"

Warden gave a short, bitter laugh. "Undoubtedly. Your name used to be Aaron Hotchner."

_Used to be_. That wasn't encouraging.

"Really," Aaron said, more as a comment than as a question. "And what is it now?"

"At present, you have no name," the self-styled Warden informed him. "You're just a lawyer. When we arrive at our destination you will receive your name."

_'Just a lawyer.' Then this_ has _to do with something that happened while I was at DoJ._

"Is it—is it permissible to ask what that name will be?"

A chuckle. "Be my guest. Ask away."

Symphonic strings gave way to thundering horns and— _shit, whatever those things are that aren't horns. Woodwinds, yeah._ He drew a cautious breath. "All right, then: What will my name be when I—when we get to our destination?"

Another chuckle. "I didn't tell you that I would answer."

The music shifted again, ominous and insistent. "That's true," he conceded. "You just gave me permission to ask."

_I really hate this music, it's like the soundtrack for an execution…._

"But there's no secret to it," Warden continued. "Your name will be Prisoner."

"Mm," Hotch sighed, knowing even as he did so that he might be asking for trouble. "Catchy."

Warden gave an unexpectedly loud, barking laugh. "Perhaps a little later in your confinement you can move up to something a bit more euphonious."

Rather than respond to that bit of intelligence, Hotchner fell silent. _Confinement. He thinks that he's locking me up for five years?_ The whole orchestra seemed to be sighing, moaning, thrashing about over something.

On some levels, the seemingly reasonable aspects of Warden's personality—little flashes of humor, for instance, and his style of argumentation—troubled Aaron more deeply than almost anything else. They indicated a balance, a sense of perspective that, however skewed from the norm, was less likely to make mistakes based on obsessions.

Abruptly the music halted. When it began again, the strings, alone, played the closest thing to an identifiable melody so far. It was, he decided, either the most beautiful or the saddest song he had heard in a long time. No doubt because the events of the past few hours had stressed him to the point of extreme emotional vulnerability, he felt his chest tightening up, sensed tears welling up behind his blindfold.

He gnawed his lip and hoped for an early return to cartoon themes.

**~ o ~**

"Yes, love?" Garcia said into her stalk mike to Rossi, but there was a dangerous edge in her voice. Only someone cheerfully clueless about a lot of what she did could be so confident that she could achieve the impossible. Someone like David Rossi, who seemed to think his chops at _Grand Theft Auto_ made him some kind of techie genius.

_I feel like frickin' Dr. McCoy: I'm a tech analyst, not a clairvoyant…._

"Any luck with the truck?" Rossi asked, his voice full of confidence.

She was a professional. She held tight to her temper.

"That depends on your definition of luck," she replied. "I've definitely located our UNSUB at 2:20 this afternoon buying a Big Mac, an apple pie, and a medium Coke in Alexandria."

"I know about that, JJ was over there. Any prints he might have left are probably long gone– "

"At least we know he isn't a vegetarian and he probably isn't diabetic, sir." She tried to keep her tone civil, but it was hard. Lord, it was hard.

"We need to identify this truck, Garcia!"

"I'm working on it," she all but snarled. "Sir, do you have any idea how many 1997 Ford F-150 trucks there are still running just in Metro DC? And how many of them are blue? I can't even sort them by male owners; this guy could be driving his girlfriend's truck. Or his aunt's. Or his mother's. Or his daughter's." She gestured broadly at her screens, not that Rossi could see her doing it. "All we really know about this truck is that it doesn't have a camper cap and it has no visible bumper stickers. We can't even be sure about inspection stickers, given the angles of the cameras."

"What do you need from me?"

Obviously Rossi was trying to be helpful, so she tried to be polite. "I need search parameters that are meaningful, sir. Even if I could eliminate all the vegetarians and the diabetics, we have no evidence that he lives in or around the District."

"What kind of parameter are you looking for?"

"Oh, 'people who hate Hotch enough to kidnap him' could narrow it down quite a bit, sir."

"People he's convicted?"

"Been there, done that, sir. I even went back over his convictions with the DoJ. I found only four people on that list—and it's a long, long list; he's been a busy guy—who own a 1997 F-150. Two are still in prison, one in California, the other in North Carolina. One lives in Oregon, he's past seventy and he's on dialysis. The fourth lives in Kentucky. The KBI assures us he's at home, they have him under surveillance, and the truck is dead in his yard."

Rossi sighed. "Then it sounds like you're doing all you can, Penelope."

"Thank you, sir," she said sweetly. The second she closed off the call she morphed into a dragon with cat glasses and breathed at her keyboard, " _Sounds like_? Give me something to _go on_ , damn it."

"Baby Girl," a familiar voice said from immediately behind her, "be patient with us. We're all going through the same things you are." Strong hands settled on her shoulders. "Nobody's a bit happy about this case."

"Every time I close my eyes," she blurted, "I see—I see—" And she saw it again, saw Aaron Hotchner's body convulsing, and she shook her head so hard that her glasses flew off. "And it's like Georgia, like—" _Terrific_. Now she also saw Reid's bloodied face at the hands of Tobias Hankel.

She used the time that she spent groping for her glasses to collect her courage. "I went for counseling," she confided to Derek, and it was the first time she had ever admitted it to him. To anyone, actually. "After Reid, I mean. Back when it was Dr. Wilmoth."

"So did I," Morgan said softly. "So did JJ and Hotch. It wasn't easy for any of us seeing that, going through that, Baby Girl. Nobody likes to feel helpless, and even though we feel that way a lot in this job, knowing the victim—that makes it harder. But we got to the other side on that one, and we'll get to the other side of this one, too."

**~ o ~**

After a while, Warden turned onto an unimproved road. Water sprayed up and gravel rattled off the bottom of the car as they bounced along in muddy ruts. Branches scraped along the windows and body of the vehicle. The current symphony—third played, so they were better than two hours beyond the place with the weeds—seemed neither ominous nor touching, which Aaron found oddly reassuring.

_I'll take any comfort I can get…._

After negotiating a couple of seriously rugged pieces of terrain, the sedan jounced to a halt. Warden shut off the ignition and released the catch on his own seat belt. "I won't be long," he said. "Don't go anywhere." Same smug, self-satisfied tone he had used earlier in the day.

_Are we even in the same day? I know that we aren't in the same state; I saw Pennsylvania highway signs hours ago, way back at the shuttered old gas station. Depending on the way he was headed, we could be in New Jersey by now. Or New York. Or Ohio, or even Michigan._

"I'll stay put," he replied, knowing he was lying, hoping that Warden's profiling skills weren't as sharp as they had seemed earlier. Warden climbed out of the car. Aaron heard the patter of rain shaken off tree branches, then the door shut with a thump.

He held his breath and listened carefully for sounds indicating the direction Warden was headed. He thought he heard him just ahead of the car, but there was so much ambient noise from the wind shaking more water down onto the car's roof and windshield that he could not be sure.

Cautiously he lifted his hands and raised just a little of the edge of the blindfold.

He saw … nothing but blackness. Wherever they were, there were no available sources of light, and between the foliage overhead and cloud cover, no light from moon or stars could reach them.

Even turning in his seat as best he could, he saw not even a glimmer of illumination.

_Which means that Warden has a flashlight. Or night vision devices._

He lowered the elastic bandage back over his eyes. Listening with all his being for any sound of Warden's return, he began to raise his arms up and over his head. He groped behind the headrest with fingers as clumsy as they were sore, trying to locate the knots that secured his head, as Warden had put it, _Like your lap tray: in the upright position_.

_Noise._

He lowered his hands back to his lap and listened.

_Another noise._

Warden's voice, low and conversational.

_He isn't working alone, I figured that wrong, shit, shit, shit …_

"... Just another minute," Warden said from not far away.

Aaron hoped he had returned the blindfold to its exact previous position.

The door opened and after the complete darkness he could sense the light through the fabric of the bandage. He turned toward the driver's side of the car, his features neutral.

"I told you I wouldn't be long," Warden said. The car dipped slightly as Warden climbed back behind the wheel, but he kept the door open and the overhead light on. He sensed Warden bending forward, apparently reaching for something. "I need you asleep right now," his captor continued, grasping Aaron's left arm. "Hold still now, little pinch—"

Hotchner fought the drug, but it was a losing battle. As the world went numb and fuzzy, his last conscious thought was, _Did I just hear a horse?_


	5. Arrival

Co-written with Esperanta, who keeps my prose typo-free and boasts an imagination more twisted than my own. The only things we created were this creepy little world and a few OCs. Trying to strike meaningful balance between team screen time and main story. Always grateful for reader input! Your comments are like dark chocolate and the smell of lilacs on a soft spring evening!

 

**Solitary 5.0**

**Chapter Five**

**Arrival  
**

**  
**

It was past 9:00 PM. Morgan could hear the cleaning crews working their way through the outer corridors.

He closed the last file folder, replaced it exactly where he'd found it, and left Hotch's office. As Acting Unit Chief, only he had the authority to search there, and as he'd suspected, there'd been nothing even slightly out of the ordinary. Reid was presently going through Hotch's computer records, searching for suspicious emails or anomalous files saved or created within the past couple of months, just to be on the safe side.

Making his way down the short staircase to the bullpen area, Morgan glanced over as the glass doors to the BAU opened and Rossi and Prentiss entered. Even though he knew they would have called him right away if they'd discovered anything useful at Hotch's place, he was still disappointed to see the bleak expressions on their faces. They were experienced crime scene investigators, not perhaps in the technical footprints-and-bodily-fluids sense, but rather in reading objects present at crime scenes—and those that should have been but were missing—for behavioral clues about both UNSUB and victim.

Hotch, however, was not the kind of guy who stamped his personality over all his belongings, laying it out for public display. He was neat, tidy, orderly, and basically kept himself _to_ himself, except for those dearest to him. Glimpses of light sometimes shone out from around the edges of the inner doorway he so carefully kept closed, and on the few occasions he'd allowed it to crack open slightly, the momentary gleam from inside had been tantalizingly warm. But those occasions were few and far between, Morgan thought with dismay, though he fully recognized Hotch's right to privacy.

_In this job, there are just some things we can never share, even with those we hold closest. That's just the way it is, unfortunately._

"Reid's ready for us," came J.J.'s voice from above, just outside the conference room. She, too, had come back disappointed a couple of hours before from her investigation of the UNSUB sighting at McDonald's in Alexandria. There had been no useful witnesses ("he had big ugly sideburns"), and even though most of the video surveillance had been down, a private camera across the street had captured the truck entering the lot. A lone internal camera had recorded the UNSUB studying the menu board, had caught him smiling genially at the counter-guy, had shown the odd little formal bow he had given the same counter-guy when he received his food order.

_Nothing_ about the man had seemed even remotely nervous or excited.

Morgan, Rossi, and Prentiss entered the conference room to find Garcia and Reid already seated at the table, Penelope frowning over her laptop while Reid made a few final taps on his tablet. As they took their seats, his notes abruptly appeared up on the display area at the front of the room, projected in a calendar-type format.

_A. HOTCHNER TIMELINE_ , read the title on the screen.

The notes began at the beginning of that week, the week of May 9-15, 2010.

Under Sunday, May 9, Reid had typed _In Milwaukee, Bow-tie Killer Case_. The same entry was repeated for the next two days. On Wednesday, May 12, Reid had written _2315, Jet Arr VA,_ then _2340, Arr BAU_. Thursday the 13th read _0125, Dep BAU._

Reid glanced around the table. "Everybody agree so far? Anytime you see an asterisk, it indicates a reasonable assumption."

Morgan knew the question was basically a courtesy, since Reid's eidetic memory kept track of such facts far better than anyone else on the Team could. However, there was always a chance one or more of them had witnessed Hotch do something that Reid hadn't, so the question wasn't entirely moot.

But no one spoke up, and heads nodded all around.

"OK," Reid went on. "We all had stand-down on Thursday, but Hotch swiped his key in at 8:22 Thursday morning, and he was here until almost 1800."

"Preliminary budget meetings," Rossi murmured. "These days Aaron doesn't dare miss one."

They exchanged glances across the table. With Bureau resources shrinking, they had to fight for every dollar they got. There was no way Hotch was about to skip a meeting and let some other unit possibly lay claim to money that he felt belonged to his people.

"So," Reid said, and slid Thursday's schedule up on the screen. _Arr 0822, Dep 1729,_ was first, followed by _~1900-2359 Home*,_ then came the most critical day: Friday the 14th, _0000-0530, Home*,_ _0605, Arr BAU,_ and _1345, Dep BAU_.

"I happen to know Hotch left here at 1:45 on Friday because I rode down in the elevator with him. He mentioned he was having a vacation at home that weekend, and I guess I must've given him a funny look, 'cause he sighed and told me that he and Jack were going to camp out in their back yard. Apparently Jack's had the camping bug for quite a while now."

Prentiss consulted her own tablet. "Hotch keeps an oversized calendar posted low on the wall of the kitchen," she said. She nodded toward JJ. "Like the one you have for Henry in the hall outside his room," she added, "but more words, less pictures. On the square for today, you could see where Hotch printed 'CAMP OUT!' in block caps." A faint, melancholy smile drifted across her face. "Jack added a cartoon of a tent in brown crayon."

"Are you sure it was Jack?" Reid asked her.

Her lips twitched. "I know Hotch is no artist, but I'm sure he could pull off a better drawing of a tent. Besides, their tent is blue and square, not brown and—" Her graceful fingers described an A-shaped pup tent in the air. "Not a triangle-shape. Hotch would have used a blue crayon and got the shape right."

Rossi took up the narrative smoothly. "There was a register tape from the supermarket that he usually uses, stuck on the fridge and time-stamped 2:52. It listed hot dogs, juice boxes, marshmallows, and something from the bakery department. I found all these items in the refrigerator or on the counter. The bakery box contained six frosted brownies. There was also a short list on the counter in Hotch's handwriting that I _think_ —you know how Hotch's handwriting is, a step or two up from hieroglyphics—anyway, I _think_ it said, tent, tarp, Coleman, fuel, bags, pillows, and then red LED-something, probably a particular flashlight."

As Reid added the supermarket time to the timeline, Rossi consulted one of his own, handwritten, notes, then continued, "The tent and tarp were in the back yard on the picnic table. There were a Coleman lantern and stove still in the garage on a shelf, and there was a gallon can of fuel near the garage door. Given their locations, it's likely that he'd returned to the garage for those items when the attack happened."

"So, OK," said JJ, twiddling her pencil. "Hotch left the grocery store a little before three and he tagged into his home security system at 3:09. The UNSUB left McDonald's at 2:20. He was fourteen minutes from Hotch's house, but he doesn't show up on the video surveillance until 3:42." She glanced over at Reid, who was updating the timeline as she spoke. "So what was he doing in that other hour and eight minutes? Wherever he was, he shows up on no traffic cams whatsoever, so he was on back streets."

"He wasn't following Hotch," Garcia contributed. "He wasn't in the supermarket lot and he wasn't at Quantico and he wasn't even on any of the main routes from it. And he drives past the house twice before he stops, and then—" She looked at JJ for confirmation. "It almost looks as though it was completely random, like he was just a—a target of opportunity."

**~ o ~**

When he returned to consciousness he was restrained on a hard, cold floor. His clothing was drenched; he could hear water dripping from his hair down his earlobe and into the puddle beneath it. He groaned and a hand grasped his shoulder.

The bandage around his head was gone. His eyes flew open. He stared at Warden, who knelt on the floor beside him, smiling. Aaron met the man's amused gaze.

"Hello, there," Warden said mildly.

"Permission to speak?" Aaron whispered.

Warden sighed like a mildly exasperated parent. "Very, very briefly."

"Why am I wet again?"

"There's no road anywhere around here," Warden replied. "I had to bring you here on a sledge behind my horse. There wasn't much rain, but there was a lot of runoff from the trees."

_So I did hear a horse._

"A sledge."

"A sledge," Warden repeated in a pleasant tone. "For the most part, wagons have wheels, sleighs have runners, and sledges are just dragged, brute force, behind a motivating source. Mine is made of willow branches, and it's almost one-hundred-seventy years old. It was used by pioneers in this area."

_No roads. That'll make Garcia's job harder._

"Where are we—"

"Don't say anything more. You no longer have permission to talk." He set a sharp, shiny knife against Hotchner's lips. "I don't like hurting people. When you get to know me, you'll find that I'm not a cruel man at all—but you _will_ obey me. I don't hesitate to punish disobedience and disrespect. To let such things slide is a cruelty of its own."

He forced himself to lie very still, to show nothing at all. _When you get to know me_. Warden had no immediate intention to kill him. Right, something about taking five years of his life. _I don't like to hurt people_. Probably bullshit; he might believe it, probably did believe it, but he'd certainly been enthusiastic with the damn cattle prod. Aaron's muscles still ached from the repeated spasms the shocks had triggered and he was sure at least one of his fingers was broken.

He wriggled a little, just to get a sense of how Warden had tied him up this time.

His wrists were still bound together, but now they were tied to his neck so that his hands were bunched up under his chin. His ankles were also tied now, secured to something that he could not see from the angle at which he lay. The room was small and cold and iron-gray in color.

"Hold still," Warden chided in the tone one might use with a recalcitrant child.

Aaron channeled all his energies into studying his captor close up and in decent—no, in _bright_ light, almost blindingly bright light. The ceiling was divided into four squares, each of which contained a high-intensity light behind heavy glass or plastic. He wished that the illumination didn't remind him so much of a surgical suite. He'd seen in his day a lot of horrible things done by people who thought they were performing valuable medical experiments.

_Stop scaring yourself. Do your job. Look at him._

_OK, late forties, early fifties, average size, fit, with the complexion of a man who spends a lot of time outside. Bright blue eyes, intelligent eyes. Eyes that would miss damn little. Right-handed. Well-manicured hands, salon haircut. Logo for an Atlantic City casino on his tee shirt. Old shirt, worn almost through at the shoulder. Cheap, thrifty? Not interested in clothes? Or a gambler, perhaps even a regular denizen of the casinos? Is that his "lucky shirt"?_

Warden's knife hand was dead steady and his voice was serenity itself. His face reflected neither curiosity nor excitement.

He tapped the blade against Aaron's lips. "Let's have a brief review," he said. "My name is Warden and your name is Prisoner. That should sound familiar. In a while, when you've begun to demonstrate a satisfactory level of humility and contrition, I may rename you Penitent. There will be rewards with that change of status—rewards and privileges—but you stole five years of my life, so don't expect to get a promotion any time soon."

_Intelligent, organized, determined, motivated._

Hotchner repressed a sigh.

_Crazy._

"A quick question," the man who called himself Warden said. "Where were you born?"

_What the hell?_

"Virginia," Hotchner replied.

"Where in Virginia?"

He could think of no advantage to lying. "Manassas."

Warden nodded thoughtfully. "And do you know what time you were born?"

As a matter of fact, he did. It had been a modest family joke: _Aaron will always be late for lunch._

"A few minutes after noon," he answered. "Three or four minutes, I think."

His tormentor sat back on his heels with a contemplative expression. "Capricorn ascendant," he said finally. "I should have seen that one coming. But your Scorpio midheaven gives you the idea that you have a free pass to bend the rules."

_This is about astrology? What the fuck?_

Slowly, keeping his voice steady, conciliatory, he said, "I don't understand..."

"Hush." The blade brushed his lower lip again. "Speak only when you're spoken to."

"But I _was_ spoken to!"

Warden shook his head in exasperation. "Speak only to reply to _questions_ ," he said.

Aaron nodded his understanding. He thought he could probably work his way out of this. At least the guy's rules seemed consistent. And here in the confines of this little gray room, he didn't seem inclined to depend so much on his fucking Enforcer.

Ninety-seven percent of the time, the only reason your captor doesn't want you to talk is that every time you open your mouth, you go off script and mess up his little fantasy. And if there is a fantasy involved, then you're probably looking at sexual sadism. Warden appeared to be your basic personal cause offender, but he did have a sadistic streak, apparently one that he was in denial about. A sexual sadist in denial was nightmare fuel.

_But the Team is on this; all I have to do is stay alive long enough for them to get here._

The blade moved from his mouth to his shirt. Aaron braced himself, recalling how Foyet had driven the knife into his body repeatedly, all the time seeming every bit as calm and detached as this man.

He lay motionless, letting his eyes flicker around a little bit, taking in his surroundings. He was on the floor of a metal cube, no more than eight feet on a side, with a door but no windows. There seemed to be signs and decorations on at least two of the walls. Behind Warden he glimpsed an iron janitorial sink and a toilet. He wondered where the other guy, whoever Warden had been talking to just before the last injection, had gone.

_Or was he talking to the horse?_

Warden slid his knife beneath Hotchner's shirt and began to cut it away from his body. That was rapidly followed by his tee shirt, his khakis, his shorts, his shoes, even his socks. When he was completely naked, Warden picked up the pieces of his clothing and dropped them into a container that sounded like a cardboard box.

His attitude throughout the process was businesslike; he neither tore the scraps from his prisoner's body nor removed them with languorous, luxurious slowness.

_So…not a sexual sadist?_

Hotchner felt desperately vulnerable, but more critically, he was shivering with cold. If the temperature in the room was much over fifty, he would've been surprised, and he was lying in a puddle of water on what he now recognized as a metal floor. Even Warden's deeply tanned arms showed goosebumps. Aaron lay as motionless as possible and gazed up into Warden's face.

_Look at me, you bastard._

No sensual satisfaction glittered in his eyes. He didn't feast his eyes on Aaron's nakedness the way a sexual psychopath reveled in his accomplishments. His expression was much like that of a bureaucrat in an awkward situation, trying to explain some new regulation.

"Let me explain the setup to you very briefly," Warden said. "You are deep underground and completely dependent upon me for everything that your life requires: food, clothing, water, heat, light, breathable air—everything. I believe that you will find it in your best interests to cooperate with me. It's the only way you will ever earn any of those resources your body will soon begin to crave.

"It's starting to crave them already," Warden corrected himself, running a finger along Aaron's shivering upper arm. "The ambient temperature in here is a steady fifty-four degrees. I have to leave for a few hours. When I come back, I will expect you to have untied yourself and put on your uniform. Your reward will be, depending on your cooperation, between one and four boxes of resources.

"Do you understand me?"

Aaron looked away. "Yeah."

_Oh, stop it. Face the man._

He didn't particularly want any kind of intimacy with his captor, but he had to find out what kind of relationship Warden thought that they had. Deliberately he made himself look deep into Warden's eyes, trying to force a connection.

_What do you see, you inadequate little fuck? What turns your crank about having me naked and helpless? Anything?_

But nothing ruffled Warden's faceless-bureaucrat features, and Aaron was unable to hold the man's gaze. "Good," Warden said. He reached over and pulled a knot out of a cord. Suddenly Hotchner's hands were free, still bound together, but no longer connected to his neck.

_And my watch is missing. When did he remove that?_

"Remember, now, untie yourself and put on your uniform. When I come back, you may ask me two questions, and only two. Think about them carefully! _Hasta la vista_ , Prisoner!"

Without a backward glance, the man arose, collecting his cardboard box with all that was left of Aaron's possessions, and vanished through a heavy iron door that closed with a clang and rattled as locks—more than one—two? Three?—were engaged on the other side.

Aaron blinked in disbelief at the lights blazing above him. _What if Warden was lying? What if he doesn't come back?_ For some reason, the image of the forgotten prisoner from Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride—a caged skeleton in tattered rags with a sword through his chest—popped into his mind. He and Jack had seen it just last year, when he'd surprised his son with a weekend trip to Disneyland. _No, can't let myself think that way! He'll be back, he will, I know he will..._


	6. Changing Expectations

 

**Solitary 5.0**

**Chapter Six**

**Changing Expectations  
**

 

The first thing Hotchner did was apply the tips of his canine teeth to the knots that held his wrists together. Now that he could move a little, he saw that his neck had been attached to the top leg of a metal cot. Presumably his feet were attached to the bottom leg. He rolled a little so he could see the leg clearly. It was attached to the floor with an L-bolt. The heads of the screws had been melted flat with a soldering gun.

Organized. Meticulous.

_And a uniform, huh?_

Hotch had seen every conceivable kind of "uniform" forced on captives by their tormentors, everything from jailhouse jumpsuits to togas to generic fatigues to kinky underwear. Given a choice, he decided, he would cast his vote for the fatigues. They were likely to be the warmest.

Aaron teased one strand of the cord free—the knots were surprisingly loose and easy to gain access to—and whatever had bound his neck to the cot fell away. He struggled up on one elbow just to get part of his upper body off that miserably cold, wet floor. The cot was the only piece of furniture in the tiny metal box. There were shelves and hooks and two recessed areas on the same wall as the door that looked like they might open up in some way. Then there was what appeared to be a pair of photo collages covered by Plexiglas bolted to the walls, but no chairs and nothing that might serve as a table.

Now he could see that the janitor's sink had a pump handle, not a faucet, and that there was a small white rectangle of paper taped up on the wall above the pump. He leaned forward and squinted. _Water not safe for drinking_ , it warned in dark red letters.

He took a longer, more detailed look around him. There had to be cameras, or at least one camera, focused on him. Personal grievance, revenge UNSUBs, like Warden was shaping up to be, were generally far too controlling to leave their prey unmonitored. More likely he was hunched somewhere in front of a display, watching to see how quickly Aaron got loose, how quickly he scrambled into his uniform. How thoroughly he analyzed his surroundings.

_Well, let him watch. There's nothing I can do about it anyway._

There were four bright and shiny, shallow little depressions in the floor, less than a quarter-inch deep, arranged in a rough square. When he got his left hand free he reached out and touched one of the hollowed-out places. He detected tiny splinters of metal in it; the depressions had been ground out recently.

And then there were the signs—four of them, all stark white with black lettering, each of them covered with Plexiglas and bolted to one of the walls. With increasing dismay, he read the signs, each of which bore the same text:

_Warden, I wish to acknowledge my part in your wrongful incarceration._ _I betrayed my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. I participated in a conspiracy to convict an innocent man. I am ashamed of and sorry for my malfeasance. I beg permission to do what I can to make restitution for the wrongs I have done to you._

_I understand that the length and severity of my sentence are contingent upon my penitence and good behavior. I thank you for your continuing effort to make my time served as humane and dignified as is consistent with my offenses against you and the justice system._

OK, that wasn't good, but it at least gave him something to work with. His captor had claimed that he, Aaron, had stolen five years of his life. He was an ex-con, one who felt that he had been wrongly convicted and somehow Hotchner had participated in it. He had played a part in a large number of prosecutions, but the number was _finite_ , goddammit. This was a puzzle with a solution.

And somehow, Elle Greenaway and Jason Gideon were involved in it. And whoever the hell Diana was. He had known three Dianas that he could recall, and none of them seemed at all likely to be involved in this situation. There had been a Diana at his junior high, a tall and sallow-skinned girl who played the trumpet and drew pictures of dolphins. A Diana had been in his class at Georgetown Law, short and acerbic and very clever. That Diana had wound up doing pro bono law in the Pacific Northwest. She had died a few years earlier, some kind of leukemia. He and Haley had sent a memorial to—he put his memory to work—Sierra Club, he believed. Then there was Spencer Reid's schizophrenic mom, a former college professor now committed to long term care at a Las Vegas area sanitarium.

He jerked as if the Enforcer had jabbed him. During the mess with the so-called Fisher King, Elle had been gravely wounded because Jason Gideon chose to break the rules that their UNSUB had laid down. There had been a Diana Reid connection, too: She had known the UNSUB when he was committed to the same institution; he had collected his information about the Team from her discussions of Reid's letters to her.

But nobody went to jail for that! Randall Garner, the erstwhile Fisher King, had blown himself up. His daughter had been killed by Frank Breitkopf, in yet another case that became way too personal for the BAU. Gideon had still been on the team then, but Greenaway was gone—and the elder Dr. Reid had nothing at all to do with Frank.

_Shit, shit, shit…this all has to make sense somehow..._

He pulled himself along the cot until he was sitting upright and picked with unsteady fingers at the cords around his ankles. From that angle, he could finally see his so-called uniform. It was a set of cotton hospital scrubs in a vivid purple that Garcia would probably describe as raspberry. It wasn't a nice warm set of fatigues with a jacket, but it wasn't kinky underwear, either.

Once he was completely free of his restraints, he climbed to his feet and put on the brightly colored scrubs. The pants had a string tie and two side pockets. The shirt had short sleeves and a V neck. He wondered whether Warden was watching him dress. Had the color been a matter of convenience, or did that shade of magenta mean something to him?

He glanced around the room another time, hoping to see something he had missed on his previous views, but—no, there just wasn't much to look at. The mattress on the cot was thin and covered with fake leather in a dull shade of institutional green. Hotch raised the mattress casually, not wanting anyone who was watching him to ascribe any significance to it.

What he hoped to find was old-fashioned coil springs, spirals of malleable metal that could be pried loose and polished to needle-sharpness. What he found was even more old-fashioned: strips of rawhide woven into a lattice and bolted to the frame.

He had seen beds like that at Colonial Williamsburg as a child.

He seated himself on the cot with his knees drawn up, hugged his legs to retain heat, and did a quick physical survey. Slight rope burns on his ankles, moderate on his wrists and probably on his neck. His fingers, although swollen and darkening to purple, seemed unbroken after all, since all of the joints were moving properly.

He was tired, hungry, and thirsty. He looked at the sink and wondered how undrinkable the water really was, and why. Chemical pollution, or biological? Or both? That would make a good question, he realized. It could help fix his location—although it was a lot more critical that the Team know his location than Aaron himself. He wondered what opportunities he might get to send a message to the Team.

_OK, now what does all of this tell me?_

_He wants me alive and at least somewhat well. He supplies a commode and a sink but he warns me that the water is not drinkable. He takes my street clothes, but gives me these rather than leaving me naked. He keeps me locked up, but doesn't want to keep me chained._

_He's smart, organized, careful, and confident. If anything, he's an over-planner, which could work in my favor. He isn't surprised, jazzed, nervous, or defensive, which is more worrisome. Nothing about him suggests that he's a first-time offender. He seems to be working alone._

This was a personal cause abduction. Personal cause UNSUBs worked alone. And yet—and yet—in spite of his apparent experimentation with restraint methods, he just didn't seem like a first-time offender.

And that made no sense. Nothing made sense. The only kind of personal cause abduction that spawned repeated offenses was the politically motivated kind—and Warden had made it clear that he considered Hotchner personally responsible for putting him in jail. And political abductions are generally group activities. So far there was no evidence except for the sound of Warden's voice that he wasn't working alone, and Aaron had pretty much concluded he'd been talking to his horse back in the woods, not another person.

_He could have been talking to nobody at all, just to mess with my head._ _He has extensive expertise in the art of mindscrew, this guy…._

And he would be permitted to ask two questions. He was being encouraged to think about which questions he wanted to ask. This was not consistent with _don't talk or you'll mess up my fantasy_.

The question, "Which questions do you want to ask?" was a lot more significant and serious than he had first realized. Did he want to find out more about where he was, information that he might use to summon help if he could find his way to a phone? Or should he concentrate on more personal concerns – motivation, for instance? Or intent?

Rather than make his decision right away, he turned his head to his left, to the wall opposite the door, and surveyed the collage of old photographs that decorated the wall adjoining his cot.

_OK, what do we have here?_

_A house. A dog. A fat kid in a diaper. An Edsel, for Christ's sake. Two bearded old men with canes…._

_**~ o ~** _

Morgan barged back into the conference room with storm clouds across his face. Taking his place at the round table, he hunched his shoulders and said, "Where are we?"

Rossi engaged the acting unit chief's gaze. "Is everything OK, Derek?"

Morgan's lips compressed to a tight, disgusted line. "Just peachy," he all but spat.

"Well," said Garcia, her tone cautious, "there's progress."

His features softened. "Give me some progress," he said, his voice softening too. "I need some progress."

As Penelope began to explain the potential Michigan connection to him, Rossi stood up and excused himself.

Only one person could infuriate Derek Morgan that much. Rossi slipped out of the room and headed for the office of Section Chief Erin Strauss. She was actually leaning against the front of her desk, arms folded, a set of matching storm clouds arrayed across her brow, as though she had expected him to show up.

Dave gave her a toothy grin. "Good evening, Erin," he said. "We have a little progress to report. The Michigan license plate was the real deal; the woman who claimed that it'd been in her garage all this time was mistaken. That means that we can place our UNSUB in Adrian, Michigan, in November of last year. With luck, he lives there. He may even be headed back that way right now."

Unimpressed, she glared at him. "Not necessarily. The tag could've been stolen from the garage and the UNSUB could've come across it anywhere." She took a deep breath. "You need to have a talk with Agent Morgan."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "I do, do I?"

Her arms tightened more severely across her bosom. "He's inflexible."

_Pot, kettle._

"Is that so?"

"All I did was suggest to him that he needed to shift himself out of the mindset that the BAU has already seen everything that can exist, that someone outside your little specialty might have something useful to contribute."

_This I just have to hear._

"I've seen the video, David. Aaron was a random target of opportunity. You're wasting your time looking for connections in his past." Her pale eyes met his. "The UNSUB drove by, maybe he was deliberately cruising for prey, and he saw someone who fit his criteria."

Picking his words carefully, Rossi said, "Erin, men who are cruising for male prey don't drive through upscale residential areas with robust security systems, and then abduct men who are bigger and more fit than they are." When her eyes narrowed, he added, "They just don't."

"Look, just because you haven't seen it before doesn't mean it isn't happening now. You need to update your profiling system, because it just happened, David. Honestly, you're becoming as fossilized as Morgan is."

"He came prepared, Erin. He had a cattle prod and drugs and a fake camper cap and license plate on his truck."

She seemed unmoved. "And your so-called 'organized predators' who prey on prostitutes and young girls carry rape kits in their cars. They use disguises, ruses."

Rossi was finding it harder and harder to maintain a friendly, chatty expression. "Erin, a predator by definition preys on those who are weaker than he is."

Strauss was having none of it. "I'm concerned by your lack of imagination. He may have been cruising for a middle-aged man that met his needs, his fantasies—most predators are fueled by their fantasies, correct?—and the first he saw who fit his criteria was Aaron. He _is_ a very attractive man, after all. I can imagine some homosexual serial rapist or killer, one whose fantasies run to his type, a tall, slender professional man, finding him quite appropriate prey."

Rossi decided it would be injudicious to suggest that Strauss's theory said more about her own mindset than that of their UNSUB.

"Thank you for your input, Erin," he said tonelessly, and fled for the relative sanity of the conference room.

_**~ o ~** _

A long time later—he had nothing to measure it by, but he was sure it had been at least two or three hours—he heard an electrical whining sound followed by a rattle _(elevator?)_ and footsteps.

"Are you awake?" Warden called out loudly enough that Hotch could hear him through the metal walls.

"Yes," he called back.

There was a faint scraping sound, and then Warden's voice said "Excellent," but it sounded nearer than it had been.

That weird little patch of screening to the left of the red bar, Hotchner realized. There was an opening on the other side. Almost like a confessional.

_That's creepy._

"You recall, do you not, that you are to speak only when spoken to?"

"Yes," he replied grimly.

"Very good." There was a scraping sound; Warden was actually pulling up a chair, making himself comfortable. "Let's start with the most critical information," he said. "Are you ready?"

"Yes." He hugged his shins tighter, hoping to warm up.

"Most critical of all, the point that you must never forget for even a moment, is that while you are here, none of the requirements of life—food, clothing, heat, light, air, water, a place to sit or to lie down—none of these things is a right. They are all privileges, Prisoner. Any and all of them can be removed without warning as punishment for disobedience or disrespect. Do you understand this, Prisoner?"

He glanced around his bleak metal box. There wasn't much for Warden to remove. Light, the cot, the silly purple scrubs. Interesting that he hadn't mentioned plumbing. Was it possible that Warden had no way of cutting off his crapper access? Or was it just that he didn't want to be bothered with the cleanup that would ensue?

Did it matter?

"Do you understand this, Prisoner?" Warden repeated.

"Yes."

_Asshole._

"Almost as important as your absolute dependence on my good will is your isolation. You are seventy-four feet underground. There is no above-ground structure to mark your location. I am the only person who knows that this bunker is still here, and I don't live on the premises. I live several hours away from here. When I leave, I don't come back for days. I want you to be sure to understand what this implies: If I remove one or more of your privileges, it may be _days_ before you get it back. Punishments here are grim and inescapable. Depending on your endurance—or lack of it—they may be fatal. Do you understand me completely?"

_Understand you, yes. Believe you? Not a chance. You're a control freak; you couldn't walk away from watching me suffer even if you tried._

"Yes," he sighed.

"Because of your criminal irresponsibility, I spent five years in prison. In a just world you would serve five years in the same prison, but this isn't a just world. I have had to create my own means of exacting restitution from you. Your sentence is five years, Prisoner. Fair is fair."

_Note to self: Potential to derail Warden's plans with requests for family visitation, phone and mail privileges, exercise yard, access to library and medical facilities._

"Now, please read me the text of one of those signs posted on your walls."

" _Please," huh? Well, aren't we polite!_

Hotchner looked at the two delusional paragraphs and made his decision. For better or for worse, he would draw a line. Warden would not call all of the shots.

"I can't do that," he said, with as much courtesy as he could put into the words.

Warden's voice had an edge to it. "And why not?"

"Because it isn't true, Warden." He hoped that using the man's preferred title might take some of the sting out of what he said.

"Really? Which part isn't true?"

He reviewed the words again, gathering his courage. "None of it is true."

"Spoken like a man who has no interest in food, water, or something to warm his feet."

_Feet. Yes, God, my feet are cold. Maybe I could have picked my time a little better._

But he would not, could not back down, so he remained silent.

"Your choice, Prisoner. You've been both disobedient and disrespectful. For your punishment you'll get none of your resources. No food, no water, no bedding. No nothing. And you lose your light and heat. Goodbye."

Before Hotchner could utter a sound, the metal door slid shut.

The cell went utterly black.

He heard rapid footsteps, a rattle, and a whine. _Elevator._

Only then did he realize that the high-intensity lights had warmed the tiny room a little. In their absence the temperature quickly dropped a couple degrees.

_Oh, crap…._


	7. Darkness to Light

  
  


**Solitary 5.0**

**Chapter Seven**

**Darkness to Light**

It was just a matter of outwaiting Warden. He dismissed out of hand the notion that his captor would deprive him of all of his so-called "resources" for days at a time. Even less likely was the notion that Warden could tear himself away from this physical location. He had to be somewhere he could see—or at least hear—his prisoner's misery.

And even if Warden did leave him there alone, the Team would find him. Even now—whenever "now" was—they would be collecting trace evidence from his garage. Garcia would be all over the Metro DC traffic cam system in search of an old blue pickup with a gray camper cap. His own security cameras had been engaged, for that matter. The Team should be looking at Warden's bland, geeky face this very moment. Of course, he would still be sporting his bangs and fake sidewhiskers, but it was only a matter of time before Garcia's facial recognition software cracked through that.

He kept his breathing slow and silent. It was possible that Warden's surveillance system was equipped with night vision capability. No, not night vision. He would have to use infrared lighting. That, or thermal imaging. There simply was no ambient light for passive night vision to enhance. And IR and thermal were pricey, really pricey. Warden's little private prison had a low tech, do-it-yourself kind of feel to it. The only window he had into Hotch's confinement right now would be an audio pickup.

 _Be vewy, vewy quiet_ , he thought, and he grinned faintly in the dark. _He's eavesdwopping on wabbits_.

He tried to relax, but a surge of anger overwhelmed him. He was too cold and too _stoked_ to settle down. Although he recognized that his wild swings in mental state were probably due in part to his efforts to stay professional while being bitten in the butt by primal fears, the knowledge really didn't help. It also didn't help that he had no way to gauge the passage of time. He could count off a minute by monitoring his pulse rate, but that was the extent of it.

He wondered whether Warden's threat to leave him alone for days had been an idle one. He certainly hoped so. It had to be, didn't it? Regardless, he wouldn't sleep. Eventually that door would open. He intended to be ready for Warden, ready to spring, ready to fight for his freedom. His Team would come, yes, but he'd do his own part.

He stood up, the cold, wet floor stinging the soles of his feet, and made a slow circuit of his cell, searching it blindly with stiff fingers. _Suck it up, Hotch; they aren't broken._ There was that weird window-like square, maybe fifteen by fifteen, with a narrow rod running up and down its center. Aaron explored its interior. He thought possibly the back of it moved, but he wasn't able to shift it himself. The rod was thin, not much wider in diameter than a finger, but solid.

The door had no interior handles, and he couldn't even get his nails under the edges. Even if it were unlocked he wasn't yet sure how he could open it.

_How did Warden open it? Why wasn't I watching him?_

And the fucking signs, those preposterous confessions that Warden wanted him to read. He had a few words of the text memorized, and he hated them more with every passing minute, even though he knew they were a clue, a tool, an insight into the UNSUB's fantasy world.

It wounded his pride. He was a good lawyer, damn it, and he had been a fine prosecutor, an upstanding prosecutor. You didn't surge as far, as fast as Aaron Hotchner had soared without being both damn good and damn careful. He'd worked hard, prepped harder, and played by the rules.

_Leave it, leave it. Come on, now, don't let it get to you!_

He sighed and climbed back onto his bunk, where he rubbed his feet with aching fingers and wondered how long it had been. Maybe an hour, maybe two, he decided.

"Warden?" he said, keeping his voice low, calm. He listened for the space of several slow, even breaths for anything, any indication that he was being monitored.

 _He_ has _to be monitoring me! OK, time to try something. I know this kind of offender. He wants validation. If a bit of acting will get me food and water, then it's worth it. Then I can keep working on him._

"You've made your point," he announced to the empty cell, hoping he wasn't just wasting his breath. Continuing, he pulled out all the stops as a profiler, went into his spiel, acknowledged that Warden was in charge, calling the shots and writing the ending to this story. He complimented the guy's intelligence, his preparation, and his sense of fair play, then did all he could to humanize himself, talking about his life, his son, about Haley, about his own experiences with injustice.

Later—a long time later—as he huddled on the cot, still trying to warm his arms and feet by rubbing them briskly, he tried yet another tack. Warden wanted begging? Fine, he'd give him begging. "I understand," he told what he fervently hoped was Warden, listening in. "Please, I was wrong. I'm prepared to read the statements. Please give me another chance."

A long time after that—his sense of time was completely hosed, but he could feel the bristles on his jaw, so it had been at least twenty-four hours since he last shaved, so, 6:30 Saturday morning, more or less—he reviewed all that he knew about the physiological changes, actual alterations in brain chemistry that could occur in captives in solitary confinement. Sometimes they were irreversible.

Over all else was facing up to the fact that he had far more buttons than he'd realized involving enclosed spaces and darkness and being far underground—and that door, almost flush against the wall. He was cold and thirsty and exhausted but he didn't dare drink water from the sink and he certainly didn't dare doze off. When Warden returned, he had to be ready for him. His best chance was to launch himself at the little prick, Enforcer or not, the minute he entered the cell.

Doing math in his head was a good way to distract himself and stay awake. Although it was hard to visualize the calculations sometimes, it was a valuable mental exercise. So he concentrated on what little he'd learned so far from Warden about his situation. The cell was roughly eight by eight feet, or 64 square feet, and he was supposedly 74 feet underground. Those two numbers multiplied together equaled...equaled—he was tired and he was getting confused easily and it had been years since he had done anything arithmetical without a freaking calculator—4440 plus 296. He moved a finger in the darkness to represent the carried _one_ in the hundreds place: 4736.

So: 4,736 cubic feet of soil and rock, probably mostly rock, hanging directly over his head.

If each cubic foot weighed 100 pounds, then, oh, _crap_ : 236-point-something _tons_ of dirt and rock that could come crashing down on him with some random shift of the earth's crust.

_Not sure I needed to know that._

"OK, Warden," he said, no longer even trying to mask his desperation. "I give up, just listen: Warden, I wish to acknowledge my part in your wrongful incarceration. I betrayed my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States—I, I'm sorry, Warden, but I don't remember the rest of it…."

In a way he was relieved that he had forgotten the paragraphs. To speak those words was to admit to a lie.

_But I don't know how long I can take this..._

_**~ o ~** _

The man who earlier in his life had been known as Norton W. Charpentier rolled upright and sat on the edge of the bed. Midday sun and fragrant spring aromas poured in through the two south-facing windows of the modest room over the stables. So did the smell of fresh-brewed coffee wafting down from the main house. He might have dismissed the previous day as a dream, except for some minor discomfort in muscles rarely used so vigorously for anything more complicated than loading a Civil War cannon in a reenactment.

 _I did it_ , he reminded himself with a sense of satisfaction. _I have him_.

As he sat there, popping his blood pressure meds with a bottle of V-8 Fusion, he reviewed the high—and, OK, the low—points of the previous day's abduction. He wondered how Prisoner was managing his time alone in the cold and dark. How was he managing the utter isolation? Was he praying? Weeping? Was he talking to the visions that solitude and sensory deprivation inflicted on the vulnerable psyche?

Norton Charpentier knew the ways of solitary from personal experience. Because of a bureaucratic snafu, there'd been no room at the medium-security prison he'd been assigned to, so he'd ended up in maximum-security instead. Oh, it was just to be for a few days, yeah, _right_. Due to the interminable bungling, it'd turned into three months instead. And he'd spent five days in a cell with a certified psycho, a huge brute of a man named Damien who claimed the Lord had told him to strangle his wife with his bare hands—and the two kids, well, they weren't his, but bastards from his wife's lovers—so he'd disposed of them the same way.

The man's body odor had been so foul it had literally made Norton sick. After being unable to eat for two days straight, he'd dared to offer the man his deodorant, and had nearly paid for it with his life. Damien had slammed him up against the bars, staring at him as though he was some annoying insect, then hissed into his ear, " _One more word outta you, little fucker, and you're dead."_ He could still remember the burning shame he'd felt afterward when he realized he'd literally crapped his pants in terror.

The guards' answer to his complaint had been a transfer to solitary—not for his attacker, but for _him_. At first it'd seemed like paradise, but then the utter lack of human contact had begun to take its toll. After he'd made numerous attempts to communicate with the guards, they'd finally responded by turning off the lights in his cell.

Before long he'd found himself screaming, praying, babbling to the forms that appeared in red on the periphery of his vision. He'd whacked his head against the wall a few times, too, thrown himself against the concrete block in fury and desperation. It hadn't killed him back then, and it was unlikely to kill Prisoner now.

He shook his head, mentally freeing himself from further consideration of his time in hell or the faithless lawyer who'd put him there. He could not afford to think about the lawyer. The surest way to give away that you had a secret was to think about it. People could read it on your face; he was sure of it. He turned his thoughts to more prosaic things: the weather, the media, the new horse in the stables below.

He snagged some fresh underwear from the bedside table and a pair of jeans and a pullover from the dresser. He studied himself in the mirror, ran a hand through his hair to tame it, and set off down the rickety wooden stairs and along the narrow gravel path to the Hawthornes' place, the source of coffee and—he sniffed delicately— _huevos rancheros_.

Bren Hawthorne looked up from the center island in her kitchen, a big woman, a substantial woman with flyaway gray hair—all deep wrinkles, deep tan, and broad smiles. All year round she lived in jeans and flannel shirts, except for those occasions that called for crinolines and parasols. "Sarge!" she boomed as she shut off the food processor. "Didn't hear you come in last night! When I woke up and saw your car, I said to Teddy, I said, 'My goodness, Ted, isn't he becoming just the featherfoot? Maybe he should change out and be a scout!'"

Norton—the man the Hawthornes called Sarge—gave her a quick peck on her leathery cheek. "I love artillery," he told her. "Nobody separates me from my trusty 'fifty-seven. My God, is that _chorizo_ from Mama Luz's place? I've died and gone to paradise." He helped himself to a corn muffin and a cup of coffee. "Who's the new gelding?"

"Name is Dickens," Ted Hawthorne told him from his old recliner in the corner of the kitchen. Ted was losing his hearing, so he always sat right beside the aging sound system. Today he was listening to something operatic. "Bought him from the same folks you got your Burley from. Whitmans? Whitfords? Something like that. Up on the ridge, near the Bauman place. Sweet-tempered boy."

"Speaking of Burley, how was your middle of the night ride?" Bren asked him.

He waved a vague hand. "What can I say? There's no tranquilizer like a good horse and a wooded path. You folks keep me sane. You know that, don't you?"

"Welllll," Ted drawled from his recliner, "we might say the same. Welcome breath of fresh air and intellectual stimulation when you show up, as well as the kind of gossip that reminds us of why we fled from academia in the first place."

Norton nodded toward the source of the music. " _Luisa Miller_?" he hazarded.

Ted Hawthorne shook his shaggy gray head. " _Boccanegra_ ," he said.

Of course. The divine duet, father and daughter discovering each other, _Figlia, a tal nome io palpito_. For an instant the former Norton Charpentier literally staggered as if punched in the heart. He deliberately turned his attention away from the bliss portrayed in Verdi's music. _No. Don't think about precious little daughters all grown up and reunited with their daddies._

_But don't think about Prisoner, either._

Venus was transiting his Ascendant, and Moon would be there soon. He would need their heat and their confidence.

Brunch. A quick run into town for building supplies and for the dance recital of the daughter of one of their local acquaintances. This would be a good day. It would keep his mind off the man in the dark. "Can I help with anything?" he asked Bren. "I can shred the cheese, or if you're thinking of making some of that Mexican cocoa..."

_**~ o ~** _

"One more time," Morgan said early on Saturday afternoon, with a sigh. He was exhausted—they all were. Nobody had slept a wink. If Aaron Hotchner'd been there, he probably would've ordered them to go home and let the Staties and the local FBI offices handle it for a few hours; to get some sleep and take a fresh look at it in the morning. But he wasn't there. He was somewhere else, and in danger, and it was up to them to bring him home. "Do we have anything new on the truck?"

Garcia touched her screen listlessly. "Lots of blue F-150 trucks, some with camper caps, some without, but none of them is our guy. It's possible he's deliberately avoiding roads that have traffic cams. On the plus side, that slows him down, wherever he's headed."

"Presuming he hasn't already gone to ground," Reid added. There was way too much energy in his voice.

Morgan wished that Reid didn't always sound so excited when he pointed something out. He knew that the kid—well, not much of a kid anymore—was just wired to lunge toward accurate data, but in that moment, it sounded way too enthusiastic for Morgan's weary ears.

The walls of the conference room were festooned with images of the furry-faced man and his battered old truck. Garcia abruptly sucked in her breath and gave a little fist-pump. "Yes! My facial analysis program's finally finished."

"All right, Baby Girl!" Morgan said, fired up again. "Let's see this bastard without all the fur."

It was admittedly a computer-generated image, blurry and cartoonish, and there was no way they could know if the man really did have facial hair, but unless the sidewhiskers were intended to camouflage an enormous scar or a birthmark, at least it gave them a better idea of what he actually looked like.

"Get that composite out to all law-enforcement agencies up and down the Eastern Seaboard," Derek told her. "And let's see that the press gets it too. Somebody out there's bound to have seen this guy."

"Whoa," said Rossi, his hands raised in protest. "Not the public. Not yet."

"We don't want to scare Furface into hurting Hotch if he—if he hasn't yet," Prentiss said.

Rossi grimaced. "I'm thinking more about what happens when we ask the public at large for help when we have this little information to go on. I don't know about you, but I'd rather we use our resources to sort through solid facts, not cranks and attention-seekers."

"Yeah, you're right," Morgan conceded. "Just the LEOs for now, Garcia."

Rossi glared at the image of the furless face. "What do you want with Aaron?" he asked it, then he turned toward his teammates. "If the UNSUB wanted to, he could have killed Aaron right there in the garage. Instead he went to a lot of trouble to get him into his truck. Even if his intention was to kill Aaron somewhere else, somewhere that's more significant, there was engagement. There was conversation. That's a lot of effort just to off somebody. So I say, alive. That leads us to, alive for what?"

Emily Prentiss consulted her own notes. " _For what_ and _By whom_ tend to interrelate," she said as she rubbed her right temple with a frustrated thumb. "But if the goal was to take him alive to some other location, then the motives we're looking at include interrogation, retaliation, sexual gratification, and ransom. There's no way this guy didn't know that Hotch is FBI. It was right there on his hat even before the UNSUB went through his pockets and checked his ID." She looked around the table. "We need to take a hard look at all four of those motives."

There was a light tapping and they all turned. Erin Strauss stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her sweater set, her fingers toying fretfully with her pendant necklace. "Have you reached any useful conclusions yet?" she asked.

Morgan and Rossi exchanged glances. "No, ma'am," Morgan replied. "We're still looking for the truck."

Strauss looked at them one by one. "You need to go home," she said. "All of you. You've been here almost twenty-four hours. Go home, get some rest, and come back tomorrow refreshed and ready to go. There's nothing you can do here right now that the other team and the other tech staff can't accomplish in your absence. If anything—anything at all—comes up that's new, I promise we'll call everyone."

All six team members chorused, "But—"

"No," Strauss replied. "Go home. You know if Agent Hotchner were here, he'd be telling you the same thing. Go. Shoo!"

  
  



	8. In a Spirit of Compromise

  
  


**Solitary 5.0**

**Chapter Eight**

**In a Spirit of Compromise**

"Are you awake?" Warden asked that evening, although part of him wondered—would always wonder— _Are you still there?_ And because there was just no way that the lawyer could have escaped his cell, what he really meant was, _Are you still alive?_

His prisoner's reply was hoarse, barely a croak. "Yes."

Warden slipped the latch on the fifteen-by-fifteen inch panel on the wall and slid the square door open. The lawyer hissed as the first rays of illumination hit his eyes. It probably seemed like an eternity that he'd lain there in the darkness.

The former Norton Charpentier leaned his head close to the square opening in the wall. If he squinted into the gloom beyond the red steel bar, he could just barely make out Prisoner, huddled in a ball at the center of his bed, with his face hidden behind his forearm while he adapted to the renewed light.

_We're both squinting, but for opposite reasons._

"Perhaps you're ready to be a bit more cooperative?"

The lawyer turned toward the window, his pale, stubbled face gleaming like the moon in its reflected light. His eyes were still mostly shut. His mouth was a grim line. He said nothing at all.

"Ordinarily I will not give you information that relates to time or place, but this time, I will. The time you spent locked up without light or food or water or heat was seventeen hours." He was pleased to see the lawyer's body jerk with surprise. "Yes, I'm sure it seemed like days, like an eternity. It wasn't. It was seventeen hours and thirteen minutes. Think of that the next time you decide to disobey. Think of that and imagine what it will be like when it really is days in hell, a week in hell."

The lawyer gazed bleakly at Warden as the implications of those words sank in. He seemed to have aged several years since he'd first fallen with a whimper to the floor of his garage.

"Now: Are you ready to be more cooperative?"

Prisoner nodded faintly.

At another time, Norton might have insisted he speak up, but not today. Prisoner had had his first taste of the stick; now he needed a touch of carrot. Warden reached out his right hand for the light switch for the cell's interior. Prisoner flinched violently from the brightness of the lights, but quickly began, one arm raised to block the intensity, to adjust to it.

When the lawyer was able to raise his head and lower his arm, to look feebly around him, Warden stuffed two shabby old beach towels through the window. "Here," he said. "You can dry the floor with these."

Prisoner unfolded his long body stiffly—he must have been huddled in that position for hours—and eased himself off the cot. He dropped unsteadily to one knee and wiped up the puddles of water that still remained where he had first lain (the air of the cell not being conducive to efficient evaporation). He mopped up the water quickly and thoroughly, then looked around as if in search of where to place the soggy towels.

"For the time being, you can hang them over the lip of the sink," Warden suggested.

Prisoner nodded and did exactly that, then wobbled back to his cot and resumed his previous position, looking up warily through the window at his captor.

Norton thrust his hands into his jacket pockets. "Here, Prisoner," he said, "a reward." He took a tangerine and two rolled-up pairs of white sweatsocks from his jacket and lobbed them in through the little window and over to the cot. "I'll be back in a few minutes and we can continue the conversation we started last visit."

On his way to the storage shelves where he had parked the handtruck with the boxes of food and supplies for his prisoner, he repeatedly second-guessed himself.

_Shouldn't have told him how long he had been in total isolation._

_Should have insisted that he answer aloud._

_Shouldn't have rewarded him so quickly._

_Should have given him only one reward, not all three._

He heard the toilet flush as he worked. _Nothing like taking something in to get the putting-it-out systems working,_ he thought with a faint smile.

Ten minutes later he steered the dolly with its four cardboard cartons over near the window and peered in at his prisoner. The lawyer still sat with his shoulders hunched over and his knees drawn up. It was an odd posture for a man of his age and standing. He seemed to be wearing both pairs of socks. He had been briskly massaging his bare arms, but quit when he saw Warden. _Still too proud for his own damn good,_ Warden thought. The tangerine was no longer in evidence, and a citrus aroma filled the air. He must have been ravenous.

"Your name is Prisoner," Norton said calmly. "My name is Warden." He waited a few seconds, and asked, "What is your name?"

Habits of a lifetime die hard. The lawyer got _Aar–_ out before he stopped himself. "You prefer to call me Prisoner," he rasped. Hating it. Hating _him_ , hating his Warden.

"And what is my name?"

His jaw tightened. "You call yourself Warden." He could have been saying _Satan_.

 _And with all the wiggle-words like_ you call me _, and_ you call yourself _. So that's the thanks I get for giving you a goddamn tangerine…._

"Now," Warden said, "read me the text of one of the signs posted on your wall."

The lawyer's eyes shut in despair, but he demonstrated no surprise at all. He had obviously seen this coming, and had considered what his response would be. "I'm sorry, Warden," he said in a low, steady voice, "I don't mean any disrespect, but I can't do that. It's a lie."

"What happened to your promise to do everything I asked, to the best of your ability?"

Prisoner considered that. "Warden," he said slowly and carefully, "I can say it, but I can't promise to mean it."

"Do you enjoy correction that much?"

Prisoner shook his head slightly. He visibly braced himself, waiting for his punishment to be named.

"Would you be open to a compromise?" Norton asked. "Lawyers love compromises, don't they?"

The lawyer glanced up. His expression was nakedly hopeful, but he said nothing.

"You call it lies," Warden began. "When you examine the evidence you'll find that every word of it is truth—but it's not my responsibility as your Warden to convince you. Conviction takes time. What I will ask you instead is to recite the text as text. Call it a fine point, but lawyers love fine points, too, don't they? When you read those paragraphs—and you will be required to read them every time I visit; it isn't negotiable—it will be with our common understanding that at this point in your sentence, you don't agree with them."

He peered in at Prisoner. "Is that a compromise you can live with?"

The man stared into space for perhaps half a minute, then nodded slowly. "Yes," he said in a hushed voice. "Yes, Warden. Thank you." That part took a lot out of him, the thanking.

"Then read the sign to me."

The lawyer drew a steadying breath and began, his tone flat. "Warden, I wish to acknowledge my part in your wrongful incarceration," he said. "I betrayed my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. I participated in a conspiracy to convict an innocent man. I am ashamed of and sorry for my malfeasance. I beg permission to do what I can to make restitution for the wrongs I have done to you.

"I understand that the length and severity of my sentence are contingent upon my penitence and good behavior. I thank you for your continuing effort to make my time served as humane and dignified as is consistent with my offenses against you and the justice system."

"Well done," Warden said. "That wasn't so bad, was it? Now come over here. Put your hands through this window, one on each side of the bar."

He backed up several paces so Prisoner could not reach for him, so he would have to stretch his arms far out in front of him. Norton knew the lawyer was cold and weak and weary, but he was a trained FBI agent—and if one of the online news reports Norton had discovered was accurate, he had killed the notorious Boston Reaper with his bare hands. No, this man would be getting nowhere near Warden.

The lawyer approached the window and obediently stuck his arms out around the bar.

Norton extended his own hand and examined Prisoner's fingers. Several of them were red and swollen, but none of them seemed to be canted at an unusual angle. He held out a pair of handcuffs just within reach of the lawyer's right hand. "Take these," he said, "and put them on. When you're cuffed, I have a little surprise for you."

Surprising hands and arms they were, too—not particularly muscular, but thickly furred, and precise in their movements. Workmanlike. When he had closed the handcuffs on his wrists, he clasped his hands together loosely and—just stood there.

Warden moved to the door and punched in the codes on all three electronic locks. Each code was different, and not a one of them in any way related to anything he might find important. The numbers included no birth or death dates—every code had been randomly generated and then memorized. Warden _rocked_ at memory tasks, and he loved numbers. Now that he had his prisoner, he would change the numbers regularly too, just in case.

When all three deadbolts had slid away, he gently pushed the door open and entered the cell, pushing the hand truck before him. He set the hand truck close by the cot, then ducked back out to collect a wooden ladderback chair.

Prisoner, he noted, watched him intently as he entered, watching his body and the door—and the handtruck with its stack of cardboard boxes—not his face. When Warden had settled the chair into the depressions marked for it, he closed the door. It sealed almost seamlessly against the wall with a sigh and a snick of locks reengaging, and a hint of confusion crossed Prisoner's stubbled features. He was observing, analyzing. Warden could almost read his thoughts. _All right, now how in hell does_ Warden _get out of here?_

Sharp-witted guy. In another time, in another world, perhaps they could have been friends. Having a beer or two over a game of Scrabble. Forwarding math puzzles and amusing photos to each other in email. Perhaps participating in lively political and philosophical debates.

But not this world.

Without a word Warden turned the handtruck and began unloading boxes onto Prisoner's cot. Evidently things happening behind his back rattled Prisoner, because he kept glancing back over his shoulder, even when it should have been clear that all Warden was doing was some basic resource management. Judging from the lawyer's nervous and troubled gaze, it almost looked as though he feared Warden was about to unload instruments of torture instead.

On the plus side, Prisoner clearly recalled that he was to speak only when spoken to. Though probably bursting with questions, he stood silently, barely even shifting his weight, his eyes fixed on his captor. Warden, for his part, seated himself on the cot between two of the cartons of supplies.

"This is the way of the world," he announced. "During the course of your confinement here I will visit from time to time, on an irregular basis, with generally an interval of two to six days between my appearances. On rare occasions visits will be closer together—or further apart. At any time that I arrive, I will expect to find both you and your quarters spotlessly clean. You are at all times to be clean-shaven, with your nails trimmed and your uniform recently laundered.

"Secondly: Your floor must be free of dust and food particles, any possessions that I have entrusted to you are to be stored in good order, and your bed must be made up properly.

"Thirdly: If you have been given an assignment, I will expect to find it carried out correctly and to the letter—and since you will never know when to expect me, it is to your advantage to police your quarters assiduously and give first priority to completing your assignments. Do you understand these three rules?"

The lawyer shifted positions slightly. "Yes," he replied, but his voice was low, not far removed from a resentful growl.

"I know that it won't dissuade you, but I advise you against wasting too much mental energy planning an escape. The door will never open except when you are shackled and immobilized. Even if you were to render me unconscious or kill me, it would profit you nothing, since you could not reach the door—and even if you could, it opens only for me. You would merely be guaranteeing yourself a long, slow death. Do you understand me?"

"Yes." Barely audible.

Warden doubted that the lawyer truly believed him, but he sympathized with the siren call of skepticism. In time, Prisoner would fully understand his situation. In time, he would embrace it. For now—well, he would just have to continue to be sullen and suspicious, and see how far that attitude would take him.

Warden settled one arm on the top of a carton. "And now you may ask me one of your two questions." He braced himself for the inevitable _Who are you_ and _What do you want from me_ —as if he had not already answered those quite adequately to the extent he was prepared to do so at this juncture—but he rather hoped that the lawyer would surprise him.

And he certainly did.

Facing squarely toward the wall, without any effort at eye contact, he asked, "Who is Diana?"

The raw, wounded parts of Warden, the parts that still identified as Norton Waldo Charpentier, longed to pull out the Enforcer and shock the living hell out of his captive for daring to speak that name. _But he heard it_ , he reminded himself, forcing himself to calm down. _He heard me invoke her name when I disabled him near Gettysburg. He has every right to ask_.

"She is my wife," Warden informed him, keeping his tone neutral. "You will not speak of her again."

The lawyer sighed once, quietly. "Followup question?"

"Absolutely not. You haven't yet earned the privilege of followup questions. I will, however, stipulate that the child with the curly blonde hair, the child who is wearing a suit with pandas on it in the swimming pool picture, is Diana as a little girl."

After a few seconds, Prisoner murmured, "Thank you."

Warden gave a sardonic grin to the lawyer's back. "You're welcome. I must leave for a bit, no more than an hour or so. During the time I'm gone, you're to unpack your resources and put them away. I believe you'll find that all of the boxes will fit neatly under your cot. The coldest spot in your cell is directly below the sink. I suggest that you store your drinking water there. You are not to eat any of the food I have supplied until I give you permission. When I return, I will expect to find your food untouched."

Warden got to his feet and reached into his pocket for the small device that enabled him to open the door from within. "I'll release your cuffs as soon as I'm outside the cell," he said. He held the device against the door and punched in a four-digit code. When the lock on the other side clicked open, he engaged the magnet and used it to pull the door open an inch or two. "You can ask your second question when I return," he added as he shut the door again.

Once all three locks were engaged, he stood about five feet from the small window and took the handcuff key from his pants pocket. "Arms way out," he commanded.

  
  



	9. Taking Stock

  
  


 

During Warden's visit to his—cell, he supposed, although it felt more like a box—Aaron had been torn in several directions. Part of him had wanted to snarl, "Are you still trying to intimidate me, you delusional little loser?" Another part had wanted to scream, "No, don't do this! For the love of God, don't leave me here!" In the end, the sober profiler in him had won out over both his pride and his fear.

_Examine the evidence. Move slowly and deliberately._

He stood for a while beside the little window with its red restraining rod, listening to the sound of Warden's departing footsteps. After a moment, he heard something slide in the distance and a rattle, and the metallic whine of the elevator.

When there was no other sound from which he might receive intelligence, he turned around and leaned his back against the wall. He wondered who had constructed this cell in the first place, since nothing about Warden's physique and presentation suggested a background in metalworking.

As to its original purpose—obviously confinement, but of whom, and for what reason?—he couldn't begin to speculate. Hotchner's ego was as healthy as the next man's, but he could not imagine that he might have done anything dramatic enough for this whole setup to have been designed and constructed for the purpose of punishing him.

Hugging himself and rubbing his arms against the cool air, Hotch leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and concentrated on mastering the panic that was trying to get a grip on his spirit.

His team was the best in the world, and Warden was an over-planner with a personal grudge. Within three days, maybe four, he calculated, if they caught some breaks and Garcia did her magic, he would be out of there.

_The boxes._

He opened his eyes and shoved himself away from the wall, then picked up the chair—a maple ladderback chair with a positively festive padded floral cotton seat cover—that sat in the four small depressions in the floor and moved it so it faced the cot. Sitting down in it, he began his initial survey of what he had to survive on.

Four boxes, all originally from liquor stores, apparently.

That might be significant.

He pulled one flap of the leftmost box toward him.

Warden, ever over-planning, had taped a printed list of its contents on the flap.

 _CONTENTS, BOX 2_ , it said.

4 sheets

pillow / 2 cases

3 blankets

mirror, shaving soap, safety razor

comb and brushes

wash cloth, bath soap, 2 towels, deodorant

shampoo, aftershave

toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss

nail file and clippers

_Wow._

You had to wonder about the kind of personality that would lock a man away in a metal box but make sure he had access to deodorant and _aftershave_. Obviously this cleanliness thing went way beyond simple hygienic issues. He peeked in and found that the shaving soap was a hockey puck-shaped, cellophane-wrapped green bar labeled _Brunner's Cold & Hard Water Ideal Shaving Soap, Fragrance: Key Lime._ The company was located in Athens, Georgia; he had never heard of it.

_OK, that might be useful information._

And a _safety razor_? Nail file and _clippers_? This was either a man supremely confident that his prisoner would not commit suicide, or so callous that he didn't care. Warden had struck him as many things, including obsessive, inadequate, disciplined, and meticulous, but not callous. Passionate was closer to the mark.

_And I could always strangle myself with the dental floss…._

He moved on to the second box and opened the closest flap.

 _CONTENTS, BOX 1_ , it read.

8 16-ounce bottles water

2 16-ounce bottles fruit juice

4 sandwiches

2 apples, 2 tomatoes

8 graham crackers

4 stalks celery, 2 carrots

legal pad / 2 pens

2 rolls toilet tissue

two paper grocery bags

NIV Student Bible / sweater

At last, here was something of immediate use: If Warden truly intended to be humane and treat his prisoner with dignity, then the very longest time he anticipated being away—at least this time—was eight days. More likely, he planned on four, given the sets of four in the food list.

Hotch figured he could probably manage eight days in this hole if he had to. He wondered what he was to do with the legal pad and the pens. His first prejudice was to use them to start constructing his profile of Warden—and making a list of questions as they occurred to him.

The grocery bags were from a Giant Eagle supermarket. He had seen Giant Eagles up in Frederick, Maryland. He seemed to recall that the chain was based in Ohio or Pennsylvania. _Am I still in Pennsylvania_?

The sweater, well, he could put that to work immediately, too. He scrabbled around in the box (the sandwiches were sealed in Ziploc bags and appeared to be peanut butter) and dragged out a ratty but heavy old gray cardigan with a zip-closure in front. There were no labels on it; it appeared to have been home-crafted.

Beggars couldn't be choosers. Feeling like some alternate-universe version of Mister Rogers, he pulled it on, zipped it, and settled back in his chair.

 _Warm_.

_CONTENTS, BOX 3_

whisk broom, plastic dust pan

2 cleaning rags, scrub brush

1 gallon capacity plastic bucket

12-ounce plastic bottle pine cleaner

washboard, 16-ounce plastic bottle liquid laundry soap

10' plastic cord, 8 clothespins

waste receptacle with liners

steam iron / _Caution_ — _do not use local water in reservoir! Bottled only!_

_A steam iron? What the fuck?_

Aaron spread the box flaps and stared inside. Sure enough, there was an electric iron in there. _So…what do I plug it into?_ He looked around carefully and found a double electric outlet low on the wall by the head of his cot. He wondered how he had missed it previously.

 _And a laundry line._ Warden seemed pretty confident that Aaron would neither hang himself nor try to electrocute himself.

_Or does he hope that I will? Is that the point of this exercise? To reduce me to a level of despair deep enough that I'll kill myself and save him from feeling responsible for it?_

He poked through the rest of the contents. The "waste receptacle" was a small metal trash basket enameled black, with a fleur-de-lis pattern in gold. Inside it were three plastic bags ( _Great, I can suffocate myself, too; there's just no end of suicide methods available to me_ ). The bags were from—he smoothed one out—Walmart. _So much for hoping it was some local outfit._

He could use that right away, too. He slipped one of the liners into the trash basket, then fished the tangerine rinds from the pocket of his scrubs and disposed of them.

_CONTENTS, BOX 4_

medicine chest with mirror

12 units aspirin, 12 units antacid

100 units multivitamins with iron

first aid kit

reading material / absorb, be prepared to discuss and defend

assignments

The appearance of the medicine chest was almost as surreal as the steam iron. It was tiny, no more than twelve by fifteen inches, but almost four inches deep, with a mirror on its front and three modest shelves. On its reverse were two fasteners with holes.

This would hang on the screw heads that protruded from the wall beside the shelf, he realized.

A first aid kit. He actually laughed aloud. _If I fail at suicide I can patch myself up, I guess._ It contained four small bandages, two gauze pads, and a one-ounce tube of antiseptic cream.

_OK, not much patching…._

_Reading material._ And he was expected to "absorb" it. What, was this crazy bastard planning to give him a pop quiz the next time he came back? Pass, and you get to eat; fail, and you starve to death? Talk about test anxiety! Well, at least whatever was in here might add to the profile, give him a little additional insight into the UNSUB. Right now he'd take any crumb of assistance he could get.

The fourth box had once held bottles of bourbon—Jack Daniels—and Hotch, who normally wasn't all that much of a drinker, felt a sudden fierce urge to feel the fiery taste of it slide down his throat. He shook aside the feeling and forced himself instead to focus on the present contents of the box. Stacked inside were three books: the American Bar Association's _Model Rules of Professional Conduct_ and two books on innocence and wrongful conviction.

Finally, there were two sheets of standard printer paper, stapled in the upper left corner and folded neatly in half. Upon unfolding it, he was surprised to see that it was a printout from Wikipedia on the Act of Contrition, of all things. The text contained a brief discussion of sin and penitence and quoted various prayers of contrition from different denominations. The website's URL was printed at the bottom of each page, as was the date the document had been printed, but the information was of no help to Aaron in his isolation—it was several months old.

_He's been planning this for a long, long time._

At the bottom of the second page, Warden—it had to be Warden; the printing was just too perfectly formed to be anyone else's—had written: _Your first assignment is to write the Act of Contrition 100x. You may choose whichever version resonates best with you, but your work is to be neat, legible, and error-free._

_Well, shit._

He heard a whine and rattle and realized that he had made no progress at all in putting away his "resources," but before he could decide what to do about that, he heard the tiny screen slide open and then Warden's voice.

"You still have time," his captor told him. "I have work of my own to do here."

"Thank you," Aaron called back, because it seemed the right thing to do.

He heard a faint click, and music drifted through the screen, something else symphonic. He stood up, rolled back the sleeves of his sweater—which were a bit too long, a minor miracle in a world ill-adapted to arms as long as his—and bent to the task of organizing his cell.

**~ o ~**

Garcia's phone rang. _Tech Analyst Lynch_ , the faceplate read.

Because officially, she was supposed to be resting—officially, she was apparently supposed to be able to just turn her concern on and off like a freaking microwave—when she answered it, she tried to sound sleepy.

"Pen!" Kevin all but shouted at her. "Sent you video, look at it, look at it, look at it!"

"Mmf," she said, still trying for sleepy. "Let me go turn the babies on."

"Save that line for Strauss," Kevin grumbled. "There, now. Look at it."

_He knows me too well…._

She clicked on the link he'd just sent her and breathed, "Oh holy frickin' crap, Lynch."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," he panted. "What did I tell you?"

She watched the same blue truck drive slowly down easily two dozen streets, in December, in January, in February, in April. Twice, Hotch's van was just a few cars ahead of it. Twice it had the camper cap. Twice it didn't. Once, there was a pile of dead Christmas trees in the back, trailing tinsel from their bare branches.

But it had the same (stolen?) Michigan tags.

"Does Strauss know about this?" she asked.

Kevin gave a small, evil guffaw. "She will in a minute."

_And then ..._

Spencer Reid sat on the floor of his living room, his long legs folded in the position that three doctorates and seven years with the BAU had not cured him of calling _criss-cross applesauce_. Having shoved all his furniture against one wall, he sat in a sea of road and terrain maps, with two laptops running, one on each side of him. One computer provided a direct connection to satellite imagery, while the other ran weather patterns for the last 36 hours.

With a compass in one hand, a Sharpie in the other, and an extra ballpoint between his teeth, he marked off one route after another in all directions, taking into consideration the condition of the roads, the speed limits, and the weather, hour by hour calculating exactly how far an old pickup truck could have traveled in X number of hours and where it might have stopped for fuel.

When his phone rang, he was almost too engrossed to notice it, let alone answer, but finally he hit Talk and said, "Yeah, Garcia?"

"I think he's a local," she said. "Kevin found the same truck, same tags, all over Metro D.C. over the past six months. Sometimes with the camper cap, sometimes without. Sometimes he was following Hotch. Other times it looks like he's just running around, doing his errands. Once there was a woman driving the truck."

Reid bent and drew a huge black circle around the District and all its major suburbs.

_And then ..._

Jennifer Jareau sat cross-legged on her couch with a sleeping Henry curled up against her, his warm, strawberry-scented blond curls tucked under her chin. On her TV screen, Steve Irwin and the Wiggles warbled a painful rendition of "Old Man Emu," but she was too comfortable and absorbed even to stretch out far enough to grab the remote and shut it off.

In her free hand, the one not supporting her son's weight, she held a part of a huge sheaf of printouts and a yellow legal pad, and it was at these that she frowned now. Two of the people Hotchner had convicted back in his DoJ days were listed not as "dead," but as "presumed dead."

She fanned through the pages in search of further documentation, then sighed. The case for _presumed dead_ seemed solid in both cases. Both men had left behind property, money in the bank, and loved ones. In one case (and she inhaled sharply at this) the man had left behind almost $100,000 from a settlement for—wrongful prosecution, conviction, and incarceration?

 _Holy crap! Prosecutorial error_? She shuffled more papers, then relaxed. Nope, must have been a different case than the one Hotch had been involved in. Lead prosecutor had admitted making an error and had been reprimanded and sanctioned by the Bar Association. So much for his surviving relatives going on a tear against Hotchner.

She sighed. _OK, back to the living_. The third person on her new list was a short, pugnacious drifter and serial rapist against whom Aaron Hotchner had testified. He'd been out of prison for two years and was now completing an allegedly unremarkable probation in Winston-Salem.

She finally reached out, but not for the remote. Instead, she hit Rossi's number on speed-dial. "Dave?" she said softly, trying not to wake Henry. "Do you have your list of people that Hotch prosecuted or testified against close by? Great—look at page 117. Seems like this guy had quite a hate on for Hotchner. He threatened both him and the judge right there in open court. What do you think?"

"Interesting," the profiling legend said. "And if you look at his picture right, he could even pass for Furface, couldn't he?"

She was so pumped that she didn't even notice _Wiggly Safari_ anymore.

**~ o ~**

Looking at himself in the mirror was hard. Shaving, brushing his hair, dabbing a little of the first aid cream on a couple spots where Warden's cords had rubbed his neck raw—these things were just routine enough to feel normal, but there was nothing normal about his situation. He saw the exhaustion and fear in his eyes, the anger and humiliation.

The weakness and vulnerability.

 _But they're not for that little dickwad's eyes. He'll see nothing but Aaron-fucking-Hotchner, professional_.

He wrung out the washcloth and hung it over the side of the sink, then dried his hands. He squared his shoulders, adjusted the zipper on his cardigan— _God, I'm finally warm. I can handle a lot if I'm warm and the lights are on_ —and turned away from the medicine cabinet.

Bed made. Books, pens, and papers on the shelf. Food and water under the sink. Cleaning supplies in the corner.

"Are you awake?" Warden called from beyond the wall.

"I am," he replied. Voice low, modulated. Jaw set. Game face on.

If Warden was telling the truth, then the only opportunities Aaron would have for escape, or even for intelligence-gathering, were the times when he "visited" the cell. His first job would be to figure out what kind of attitude, what kind of behavior, would bring Warden here most often, and keep him down here and engaged.

_And if the only thing that turns his crank is abusing me, then that's a price I'll have to pay._

The symphonic music that had drifted through the tiny, screened opening on the wall was cut off. He heard a plastic CD jewel case being closed.

The square window to the left of the door slid open. Beyond the red bar, he could see Warden in his navy blue knit pullover and his tan jacket. He had a small cardboard box tucked under his arm.

"Hands out," he said, and dangled the handcuffs just barely within Aaron's reach.

Hotch extended his arms, wondering whether Warden would eventually get sloppy about this aspect of his captivity— _hoping_ that he would get sloppy, because otherwise, physically overcoming the guy would pose some serious problems. He snapped the cuffs on, noting that Warden seemed unconcerned with how tight they were, as long as they were secure.

 _Take your blessings where you can find them_.

There was a faint tapping to his right. He held his breath, the better to identify it. _Fingers on a keypad; those are electric locks._

 _Not entirely low-tech, do-it-yourself, then_.

Warden pushed the door open. Hotchner kept his head facing mostly forward and tried to get a covert look at the layout of the keypad. No, key _pads_. Three of them, each one right under another. All seemed to be the same layout, possibly same manufacturer.

"Hello," the little dickwad said, almost cheerfully. "Place seems to be in order."

Aaron almost replied to that, then decided that probably Warden hadn't meant it as an invitation to speak.

"What's your name?" he asked.

 _Here we go again…_.

"You prefer to call me Prisoner," he said.

"And what is my name?"

"You've ordered me to call you Warden."

There was movement. Out of the corner of his eye, Aaron could see that Warden had taken the Enforcer out of his jacket pocket.

"Let's try that again, shall we?" Warden said. "And this time, simple declarative statements, no wiggle words allowed, and a bit more respect. What's your name?"

Aaron decided that the battle wasn't worth the effort. "Prisoner," he said, and then amended it to, "Prisoner, sir."

"And mine?"

"Warden, sir."

 _Feel nothing. Show nothing. Miss nothing_.

"Where did you put the ropes you were tied up with when you first arrived?"

The question surprised him. "They're in the trash basket by the door," he said. "Should I have saved them?"

He braced himself, half-expecting a shock, but all Warden said was, "Keep them, throw them away, whatever you like. I was merely curious."

He heard the creak of leather as Warden sat down on his bunk. "You may ask your second question now."

Keeping his tone even and respectful, he said, "What was your sentence, sir, and how much of it did you serve?" He knew it was an incendiary question, knew that Warden had expected to be recognized, but hoped that his captor would be distracted into focusing on the second part of the question.

"Twelve years," Warden replied, his voice as even as Hotchner's. "I served four years, eleven months, and twenty-two days."

_Yes. Too busy getting the numbers right to notice that I still don't know who the hell he is._

Hotchner mentally reviewed the kinds of crimes most likely to rate both that kind of sentence and that early a release. Even with those clues and the name of the man's wife— _if he was even married at the time; she could have met him afterward, or even while he was in prison_ —he was still at a loss.

Another creak: Warden was on his feet.

"It's time for me to leave," he said. "I have a long drive ahead of me. I'll try to get back here as soon as I can. Remember to get your assignment done."

"Sir, I—"

"Speak only when you're spoken to."

"But—"

He felt the contacts of the Enforcer along the back of his neck and closed his eyes. _No, please don't. Please_. He stood as still as he could. When no shock occurred, he finally opened his eyes and looked out into the shadowy depths of the anteroom that appeared to surround his cell.

 _Hmmm._ It seemed sort of like a cave, sort of like a mine. It made sense that Warden had taken advantage of a geological feature that was already present. And then he remembered: Warden had called this place a bunker. _Gotta give that some more thought._

Warden took something out of his pocket, held it against the door, tapped in a code, and then pulled the door open slightly with the device, as though it might contain something like a magnet. He had left the small box he'd been carrying behind, no doubt on Aaron's bed.

The door shut, the locks engaged.

"Arms," Warden said. After he'd released Hotch from the cuffs, he repeated, "I'll return as soon as I can." He slammed the window shut and Aaron heard a bolt sliding home.

When Warden's footsteps had receded, when he heard the rattle and whine of the elevator, Aaron sat down on the bed and opened the box.

Inside was a sectioned disposable picnic plate that contained a turkey sandwich, a bunch of grapes, and a narrow slice of peach pie. Forcing himself to eat the food slowly was one of the hardest things he'd done since his abduction. When he was finished, he was so sleepy that he wondered whether the food had been drugged, but he couldn't stay awake long enough to prove anything to himself, one way or the other.

**~ o ~**

Late that night, once he'd rescued the potted palms, the tarps, and the magnetic signs from the back of a certain blue Ford F-150, the former Norton Charpentier rapped on the back door of the small brick structure that dominated the rural property. "Doc?" he called. "You up?"

After perhaps twenty seconds, a feeble voice said, "That you, Sarge?"

"Yes, sir," Norton replied jauntily. "I brought you some of Bren's deep-dish peach pie."

The door swung open. The elderly man who occupied the house ushered him in. "Music to my ears," he said, "and magic to the gustatory processes. Come in, come in. Care for a nice cup of herbal tea?"

Norton beamed at the old man, who rarely left his house; rarely, in fact, left the huge old-fashioned kitchen he used as office, den, and living room. "Tempting, but I'm between here and there, so to speak, and I don't have much time." He peeked past the old man to the laptop sitting among stacks of books and papers on the table. "Who has your attention tonight?"

"Ah, the _Lzhedimitrijs_ , as usual," his host, an emeritus professor of Russian history of some reputation, growled. "You know, there are those in Russia who've been known to call Dimitri Medvedev a _Lzhedimitrij_ , too. Come on, just one cup, my friend."

Norton sighed. "Fine, Richard. One cup, and maybe just a sliver of this." He shifted a few books and set the foil-wrapped pie pan on the table. "Then I need to get on the road. Did you mean to leave your truck outside the garage?"

The historian scowled and waved a dismissive hand. "Crap, did I do that again? So little time left, so much misinformation to correct, and don't even _start_ me on Wikipedia…. I don't suppose I can persuade you to put it away for me? The Toyota's in the garage, right? I remember Sarah put the Toyota away on Wednesday when she brought me home from the dentist. Here, pick one."

Norton hated seeing the tremors in Richard's arthritic hand as he extended a small wicker basket of tea bags. Time was when he'd been quite the campus hellraiser, or so they said. "Peaches and cream," he said, selecting the appropriate flavor, "to harmonize with the pie. Sure, I can put it away for you. Is the key still on the—"

"Yes, the nail just inside the garage."

"You should keep that key inside, Richard."

_But thank God you don't._

"Ahh, it's a piece of shit, boy. Coughs up so much out the tailpipe, I'm perpetually surprised that it still passes emissions standards." The historian handed over the knife and server to Norton. "You do it. I'm not as steady as I once was. Sit down, sit down, damn it. And while we share our little repast I'll tell you what that clown in Cambridge has been saying about the late and unlamented Grigori Otrepiev. Shockingly, _shockingly_ shoddy scholarship, anything to raise a little bit of a stink, get some notice, some _ink_ , as we pre-Internet fogies used to call it…."

  
  



	10. Default Position

  
  


He thought that probably it was the evening of Tuesday, the eighteenth of May. He hoped he had figured that right. If he hadn't, he would be running out of sandwiches soon. They were disgustingly gooey things, peanut butter and honey on whole wheat—who in _hell_ puts honey in peanut butter, anyway?—but hunger can make anything palatable.

He was currently in his bed wearing his scrubs, socks, and sweater, curled up under the covers with a pen and the legal pad, adding to his list of potential questions for the next time his captor showed up. His fifth bottle of water sat on the seat of the chair—he had removed the cushion and was using the chair as a bedside table—with his last carrot and two folded pages of notes he had made on Warden's photo collages.

Never before in his entire life had he spent more than a few hours away from the sight and sound of life, of other human beings, and now—he rubbed his jawline again experimentally—it had been at least three days.

Reading that prisoners go mad in solitary confinement is nothing to actually experiencing the excruciating reality of constant silence, with nothing but your own heartbeat and breathing for comfort. You awaken, you clear your throat, the sound bounces off the walls like thunder, because the acoustics of an all-metal room are like those of an eight-by-eight foot shower stall, and you jump. You panic at the sound of your own body. After hours of this, you begin to talk to yourself. To recite anything you can think of, from Shakespeare to nursery rhymes.

To read aloud from the American Bar Association's snore-inducing _Model Rules of Professional Conduct_.

To read aloud from the _Model Rules_ in the voice and mannerisms of, say, Richard Burton. Or Jason Gideon. Or George W. Bush. Or Spencer Reid.

As foolish and demeaning as he'd first considered Warden's idiotic insistence on constant cleanliness, within a few hours he'd eagerly embraced it for no other reason than it gave him something to do. Shaving had been the first action that had demonstrated its usefulness. After thirty-some years of daily shaving a coarse and insistent beard, he could recognize his jaw after twelve hours and after twenty-four. Since Warden insisted it be clean-shaven, he had right there on his face a means for counting the days of his confinement.

Six times, his jaw had felt like half a day's growth. Six times he had shaved, and each time, he had made a tiny tick along the first page of Numbers in the trade-paperback-sized bible Warden had left him. He was pretty sure that it had been Saturday night when Warden left him. Even if he had calculated that incorrectly, it was something to build on.

So…Tuesday night.

Three days out of four—maybe eight—days until Warden returned.

His assignment was complete. It had taken longer than he had thought it might. He'd had to start two separate pages over, once because he'd left out a word, and the other because he'd become sloppy and his careful printing had devolved into his usual scribble. _Neat and legible, error-free_ , Warden had wanted. Well, that was what he'd get. Aaron had always been fussy about having his homework done. Whatever the teachers asked for, that was what he gave them. Pleasing his teachers had always been far less complicated than trying to please his father.

Something else he'd done to keep his mind engaged and focused: He was memorizing the books of the Bible in order, something his childhood friends had accomplished about the time they hit puberty. He set aside his legal pad and began to name them aloud.

"Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, One and Two Samuel, One and Two Kings, One and Two Chronicles—crap, those four—and then Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah." And what the hell were those four he kept forgetting? Job was one, Esther another, Nehemiah and somebody else, but who, and in what order?

_Never mind. Don't get hung up on them. Move forward._

He took another sip of water, carefully replacing the cap on the bottle. "Jeremiah," he began again. "Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea." He'd worked out the mnemonic _Jerry laments Zeke's dandy hose_ for that grouping of five.

_Whine. Rattle._

His heart thundered.

 _Warden planned four days and it's only been three_. He held his breath, praying that what he heard next would be not Warden's loafers, but the boots of an entire SWAT team.

Unfortunately, what he heard was the high-pitched squeal of Warden's hand truck.

 _Default position_ , he reminded himself. He'd designed a matrix of interpersonal choices he could display when his captor visited. Default position, or _pretend-Warden-is-well-wrapped_ position, was one of respect, compliance, and credulity. Against it, all other behaviors could be observed and measured.

He glanced around the room—he'd been cleaning as he went, something else that filled the hours and helped to discharge some of his rage—and he felt his captor would be reasonably satisfied with his housekeeping efforts. He'd made some small modifications to his living area, what little there was of it. It would be interesting and instructive to see how Warden reacted to them.

"Are you awake?" the precise voice called.

He stood up, squared his shoulders. Found his game face.

"I am."

Aaron turned to face the square window with the rod as it slid open. His captor wore a blue and tan plaid cotton shirt, jeans, and a denim jacket. The hand truck, which this time held only two boxes, stood at some distance from the door. The expression on the little dickwad's face seemed more one of curiosity than anything else. As before, he stood at least five or six feet beyond the window when he addressed Aaron.

"What's your name?"

_Here we go again…._

He managed to get through both the name thing and reciting those appalling paragraphs without incident. If the Team didn't find him soon, he'd eventually have to put up some kind of protest against them, but for now, he'd stay firmly in Default position.

"Your hands."

Hotchner presented his arms, accepted the handcuffs, and fastened them onto his wrists. He noticed that his so-called Warden watched his every move closely. He was an observant little guy, thoughtful and analytical.

_Oh, right. He profiled himself for me._

The keypads were tapped and the door opened. Warden entered and closed the door behind himself.

"Interesting move with the towel," he said, his voice neutral. Hotchner had fished the cords Warden had used on him originally out of the trash, and had strung them from a few of the hooks that protruded from the wall. One of the two shabby beach towels he had been given to dry his floor with, a bright yellow thing that featured a shark in sunglasses enjoying one of those foofy umbrella'd tropical drinks, now hung between the commode and the wall that had the door and window.

If Warden showed up while he was on the can, he would still have some privacy.

 _OK, not completely Default position, but his rebellions were all tiny and defensible_.

Warden all but buzzed around the cell, shaking out the blankets, running his hand along the shelf and along the floor under the cot, peeking into the medicine cabinet. He glanced over the folded sheets of paper with a frown, then said, "Where is your assignment?"

"In the pages of _Faultlines: Innocence Projects and Their Fallout_ ," he replied. "The one on the shelf with the white cover, by—"

"I see it, Prisoner."

He heard his captor move to the shelf, heard the rustle of papers, and heard the creak of the leather lattice as Warden sat down on his bunk.

Aaron refused to allow himself to peek over his shoulder to see how Warden reacted to his assignment. He'd numbered each iteration that he had printed—his cursive writing was even hard for _him_ to decipher on occasion—and he had checked it over at least half a dozen times.

Part of him feared that his captor would expect him to recite the Act of Contrition as another indication that Warden was the aggrieved party and that he, Aaron, was confessing his sins and pleading for forgiveness. If he did make such a request, Hotch had already decided that he would have to give up on Default position. Warden might have the cell, the shackles, the Enforcer, but he was not and could not be a god, _all-good and deserving of all my love_ , as the prayer put it.

Instead, Warden said, "How are the hygiene supplies working out for you?"

"Just fine, thank you," Aaron answered.

"What did you think of the shaving soap?"

He decided on honesty. "It's outstanding," he said. "I prefer it to the bath soap." And it was, it was great stuff. If it didn't smell like food, it would be perfect.

"Would you prefer to use it instead of the Dial, then?"

"Yes."

"Are you exercising regularly?"

_Oh, sure. I run fucking laps in here…._

"Situps, pushups, crunches," he replied. _Sometimes they're the only thing keeping me sane._

"And your bowels. Are they regular?"

For the space of a heartbeat, Hotchner's professional armor slipped and he was just a lonely and frightened man, robbed of his name, his loved ones, and his dignity, chained facing a wall while his tormenter interrogated him. His bowels were none of Warden's fucking _business_ was what they were, and he didn't even want to think about what kind of bright ideas the dickwad might have for regulating them.

Mentally, he scrambled for his professional distance again and found it. "No complaints," he replied, his voice even.

 _There's something out there, beyond the shadows. Are those bars? Is that a cage?_ He moved his head slightly, the better to take advantage of the angle of a shadow. He wasn't sure. He wasn't even sure he wasn't imagining it.

_Might as well find out right away whether dickwad plays it straight, or he plays little dickwad games._

"May I speak?"

"Briefly."

_Always with that limitation._

_Control freak._

"Warden, when you give me permission to ask questions, do you—" _Phrase it right_. "Do you differentiate between major questions and minor questions?"

A lot of how he conducted himself in the future would depend on how Warden answered. The worst possible response, of course, would be to count even that question as one of his two questions, but Warden seemed genuinely to believe himself to be a fair and humane man. He knew that he possessed the lion's share of power, and he didn't seem inclined to play power games to prove his point.

_So far._

"If by major and minor, you mean simple queries about the necessities of life as opposed to the larger questions of why you are here, then certainly there's a difference. If you need to ask me for more toilet paper, I certainly won't count it as one of your questions."

Hotchner didn't even realize he had been holding his breath until he let it out. "Thank you."

"Any other— _minor_ questions?"

"Not at the moment."

"I would appreciate a little respect, Prisoner."

God. It was like dealing with his father, or a self-aggrandizing judge. "Not at the moment, sir," he corrected himself.

"I have a question for you," Warden said, his voice cheerful and enthusiastic. "Consider your answer carefully. What's the first thing you remember wanting to be when you grew up?"

_What the hell kind of question is that?_

After rapidly examining the question from all sides, he decided that, like his time and place of birth, it wasn't something worth confabulating about. "My mother tells me that I wanted to be a policeman," he said.

"Your mother? But what do _you_ remember?"

"I guess I wanted to be a policeman. The first thing I can _remember_ wanting to be was a race car driver."

"What was it about driving a race car that was so attractive?"

Hotch frowned, grateful that he was facing away from his interrogator. He knew the answer, but it sounded really dopey. "I-I don't recall, exactly."

"You're lying, Prisoner. You're lying, and it doesn't become you. Lying wins you no resources."

 _Christ_. "The gear shift," he admitted with a sigh. "The gloves and the helmet and…the way the engine tone changed when they shifted gears."

"A little respect?"

"The gear shift, _sir_." He shifted his shoulders. "And now I do have a minor question, Warden, sir." ( _OK, maybe you can back off a little on the sarcasm, Champ?)_

"And that would be?"

"What's _your_ first memory of what _you_ wanted to be?"

There was a gratifying silence, then Warden said, "Ah, but that's a major question, Prisoner. Do you really want to squander one of your two capital-Q questions on that?"

"Yes, sir."

There was another silence, and then Warden said, "I'm sure I thought about a lot of things, but the first I remember was this. Our parents took us to a circus, and there was a man in a silver suit and silver top hat who rode an elephant. I recall thinking that had to be a really cool life, going from city to city in a shiny silver suit and riding an elephant." Warden gave a little chuckle, then said, "I hope you feel that you spent your question wisely."

"Yes, sir," Hotch said, infusing the words with as much meekness as he could manage. "Yes, sir, I do."

_Game on, dickwad._

_You weren't an only child. You grew up with two parents, and you perceived yourself as living in a city, not a town or a place_.

"And now I have some things to accomplish here," Warden said. "While I'm engaged in that, you are to list all fifty states and their capitals, neatly and without errors. You can trade that for some extra resources."

"I'm chained to the wall."

"Don't be juvenile, Prisoner. Your cuffs will be removed."

**~ o ~**

The nice little man, the tidy little man in a suit and a bow tie, the little man from the Craigslist ads, beamed at her as he stood on the front steps of her townhouse. Eagerly, he presented her with an old-fashioned deep-fat fryer, round and fat and avocado green, like the one her mother-in-law had used.

She handed him some folded bills and he relinquished the deep-fat fryer into her arms. She carried it into the kitchen, set it down on the counter and opened the lid – to expose Aaron Hotchner's head, utterly hairless; even his eyelashes and eyebrows were missing.

She woke herself up screaming, and all her husband's sleepily murmured _Now, Erin, honey_ s could do nothing to banish the horror. It took three tumblers of peppermint schnapps, warm, never mind the damn ice, before she could even return to the bedroom.

**~ o ~**

He wasn't sure which annoyed him more: the stupidity of the busy-work task, or the fact that he was having trouble carrying it out. He gave up trying to list the states in alphabetical order soon after he started. Instead, he started in the northwest corner, Washington, and mentally listed states as they appeared on the map as he envisioned it, and even then on his first try he came up missing two states (Utah and Minnesota).

_And what the hell is the capital of Vermont?_

He traveled all over the country regularly. He spoke to agents in field offices in state capitals all over the country on an almost daily basis. Why was this turning out to be so hard?

The purpose of this exercise, he recognized, was to demean him and to instill in him a sense of childlike powerlessness, inadequacy, and fear. Despite Warden's snarky _Don't be juvenile_ comment, that was exactly the condition he was trying to trigger in Hotchner.

 _Montpelier, goddammit_.

He still had two state capitals left blank when the symphonic music stopped and he heard the rattle of a CD case, then Warden's voice caroled, "Time's up, Prisoner." The little window with the bar opened again. "Hands."

As neatly as he could, given his time constraints, he printed _Fargo_ , then flipped to another page and wrote _Concord_. Then he set the papers aside and came to the window.

As he began to reach around the center rod, Warden said, "The other way this time, Prisoner. Face inward."

Hotchner turned around and tried to put his hands through the window. The position wouldn't be quite as comfortable as its reverse, because the window was located rather high on the wall, but he would be able to observe Warden's face. That would probably make the sacrifice in comfort worthwhile. Warden could also observe his face, but he had spent his professional life learning to school his features.

_I can do this._

This time, Warden pushed back the sleeves of Hotchner's sweater and fastened the cuffs himself, and he clipped them a little tighter than Aaron would have. Not painfully so, but the difference was noticeable.

The locks snicked, and Warden entered the cell, this time pushing his little hand truck in front of him. He parked it, set the brake ( _like it's going to roll away?_ ) and shifted the upper box of two onto the cot. "That's for last time's completed assignment," he said, and he sat down on the bunk. "This is your current assignment? Good."

Holding the three sheets of paper some distance from his face ( _far-sighted_ , Aaron noted) he glanced down over the writing, then took a ballpoint from the breast pocket of his shirt and drew two small circles.

 _He doesn't wear a wedding ring_.

"Fargo may be the largest city in the state," he said, "but the capital is Bismarck. And how did you manage, with all your education, to misspell Connecticut?"

There was no sense in protesting that he had spelled it correctly, that Warden had just read it wrong. He was supposed to have written neatly. And there was no freaking excuse for getting Bismarck wrong. He kept his face a mask.

 _Show nothing. Feel nothing. Miss nothing_.

"Pity about the other resources," Warden said, his gaze drifting to the other box on the cart, his expression as blank as Aaron's. "Maybe you can win them next time."

"Maybe I can," Hotch echoed quietly. "Sir."

Warden leaned a negligent elbow on the box of resources. "I want to talk to you briefly about your assignment for next time. I'm asking you to list all of your teachers, K through 12, and everything that you can remember about each of them. That's the teachers, not what happened in the classes. Extra details will earn extra points." He got that smug little grin on his face. "And before you decide to invent details, think of what will happen if I quiz you on those details four years from now."

"Permission to speak?" Hotch blurted.

"Briefly."

Picking his words with infinite care, he said, "Warden, sir, I know that you've given a lot of thought to—to some aspects of, of this. I appreciate your planning, sir. But—have you given any thought to current research on the effects of solitary confinement?"

A sharp bark of laughter. "That sounds like a capital-Q question to me, Prisoner."

"No, I misspoke; I don't mean it as a question, Warden. I mean it as a statement." He looked directly into Warden's pale, and suddenly ice-cold, eyes. "Sir, I can survive four days, maybe four weeks, but even four months of solitary confinement will—"

"Enough," Warden said. "You have no idea what you can or cannot endure."

 _Oh, yes, I do, Warden. Four years of solitary confinement would turn me—would turn anyone_ — _into a vegetable. A gibbering wreck._

"Permission to—"

"Silence!" Warden rose to his feet and reached into the back pocket of his jeans for the Enforcer. "It's time for me to go."

"Please, sir," Hotchner said, keeping his voice low but steady, determined. "What about my second question?"

Warden's thumb hesitated on the power switch. "It'll cost you."

Aaron sighed. "What will it cost me?"

Warden gave that some thought. "Two hundred more repetitions of the Act of Contrition."

Aaron nodded. "Fair enough. I can do that." Sensing Warden's ambivalence, he added, "Sir. I can do that, sir."

The Enforcer was returned to Warden's pocket. "What's your question?"

"This place," Hotch said. "Who built it?"

Warden barely blinked. "White supremacists in the early nineteen-eighties," he replied. "And you've exhausted your good will with me today." He nodded at the box on the bed. "You have food and water and more toilet tissue. I'm leaving."

He opened the door, steered the hand truck out of the cell, and shut it behind him. When he came up to the window, he took one of Aaron's wrists in his fingers and said, "What's the capital of North Dakota?"

_Dickwad._

"Bismarck, sir," Aaron sighed.

The key turned in his cuffs. "Better."

  
  



	11. A Matter of Timing

 

Glenna, the new kid on the second team, poked her narrow head into Morgan's office. "Sir," she said, her voice in that kind of controlled-quiet tone that rarely heralds good news, "you'll want to come to the conference room right away."

He gave her a quick, tight-lipped nod. It was late on Wednesday afternoon. Aaron Hotchner had been missing since Friday evening, and while there were a blue million slim leads, there was still nothing of substance.

_Calm down; this doesn't necessarily mean bad news in the Hotch mess._

_Could be another kind of bad news. Another 9/11-type attack. A presidential assassination attempt. A dumping ground with dozens of mutilated corpses._

Prentiss, JJ, Reid, and a pair of evidence techs had preceded him to the room with the round table, but no images had been thrown up on the big screens. Instead, everyone stood quietly looking at a large white envelope on the table. It was a US Postal Service Flat Rate envelope, the kind you could stuff with any old thing and throw into outgoing mail. It was addressed via computer printed label to the Behavioral Analysis Unit.

The return address was 8723 Westbrook Heights, Arlington.

_Aaron Hotchner's address._

"Mailed out of Harrisburg early Monday morning," the elder of the two evidence techs said. "It isn't a bomb. They've already X-rayed it and checked for chemical evidence of explosives and, ah, organic decay."

"Anything show on the X-ray?"

"Watch, keys on a keychain, what appears to be a folding knife," the tech replied.

Everyone had gloves on, so Morgan pulled a pair from his own trouser pocket. Rossi and Garcia arrived while he was working them on over his fingers. He could feel everyone holding their breath.

_OK, so no bombs and probably no body parts._

He slit the envelope open to reveal a mass of torn and crumpled strips of newspaper. " _New York Times_ ," he announced. "February third of this year." He unfolded the packing material to display Aaron Hotchner's credentials, his billfold, a set of keys, a watch, a pocket knife, and a partially-emptied pack of spearmint Tic-Tacs.

He jerked his head at the evidence techs and they descended on the envelope and the strips of paper.

There were a few seconds of complete silence, then David Rossi said, "Well, that doesn't add up to 'he-sleeps-with-the-fishes,' does it?"

Reid, his gaze riveted to the table, said, "It's almost like someone's saying, 'he won't need these while he's here.' Wherever 'here' is."

"But that isn't his watch," Garcia said. "He wears a Seiko. That's a Timex Ironman."

"It's _one_ of his watches," Rossi told her. "He had—" He closed his eyes and bit his lip in consternation. "He _has_ three that I know of. He wears the Timex when we're working with the kids, with the soccer team. He usually wears the Seiko to work. He has a classic Rolex, too; I think it was his dad's. I've only seen him wear that two or three times."

"The Rolex and the Seiko were both at the house when we were there," Emily said, then she opened Hotchner's wallet with a gloved finger. "There are pictures missing," she said. "He carries a studio portrait of himself and Jack, and Jack's current preschool picture, right there beside his driver's license." She looked around her defensively. "OK, so I peeked when he paid the tab for the St. Pat's Day party. Tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing."

"So, what's the significance of that?" Morgan asked the team. "Is our UNSUB letting Hotch keep pictures of Jack with him? Or is Hotch maybe already dead, and the UNSUB's targeting his son?"

He heard someone say something that sounded like _We got prints_ , then Prentiss repeated, "They have prints!"

_Yes 'Bout goddamn time we got some breaks here…._

**~ o ~**

He arbitrarily called his two shaves of the day "Noon" and "Midnight." Absolute accuracy was less important than consistency.

He was edging toward the midnight shave of what should be Wednesday, May 19, and doing a little resource management of his own, dividing his three bottles of fruit juice into six half-bottles, when the lights went out.

God _damn_.

_OK, then Warden has to be around, right?_

"Oh, come on," he roared at what he hoped was Warden's audio monitoring system. He thumped his fist against the wall. "Hey! You should be happy that I'm keeping track of this!"

He capped both bottles and groped around in the dark for the sweater he had hung over the back of the chair. He was adjusting to the temperatures in his cell now, and no longer felt the need to wear the sweater when he was under the covers, but he recalled how the last time Warden had shut off the lights the temperature had dipped perceptibly.

_Asshole. Dickwad. Loser._

Once he was bundled up and zipped, he helped himself to a sip of juice—cranberry-apple this time—and considered possibilities. He didn't want to get his hopes up, but … Warden might have cut the power if he sensed the authorities were coming his way, too.

The lights flickered back on for a few seconds. He reminded himself not to get his hopes up, not to get too invested in his interpretation of what was going on. Then they flickered back off again.

It was likely, he realized with a sigh, that the thing with the lights had nothing to do with either his activities or the approach of a rescue team. The bunker was supposedly way out in the boonies. Power out in the boonies could be an iffy thing.

He lay down, pulled the covers up over his head, and thought about Diana, wife of Warden. Diana, the blonde in the lime-green swimming suit with pandas frolicking across her tummy. Diana, whose somewhat plain features were made radiant by the goofy, troublemaker smile that she wore in four of the seven pictures he had been able to identify as hers. She seemed an odd match for the stiffly formal Warden.

And why were there no pictures of Warden? Unless he was somewhere in the random groups of small children at pools and picnics and parks of a bygone era, he was nowhere in evidence in the posted collages. Was he ashamed of himself? Was there something about his childhood and youth that he didn't want Aaron to know?

Or was it simpler than that? Maybe he was just the person who'd taken the pictures.

The lights flickered back on, dimmed, then returned to full power.

Aaron sat up, crosslegged, and reached for a legal pad. Among this time's "resources," there had been two more legal pads and four more pens, which probably meant there was a lot of writing in his future. For now, it meant that he could designate particular pads for particular purposes. The one that sat beside him day and night was the one he used for every kind of brainstorming and list-making.

He picked up a pen and flipped to _p3/requests_ , where he added "matches, candles" to the list of things it couldn't hurt to ask Warden for.

His second resource box had been much like his first: water and fruit juices, toilet tissue, those terrible peanut butter and honey sandwiches, a scattering of apples and oranges, some bunny food and crackers. In addition to the extra legal pads and pens, Warden had included three Slim Jim beef jerky sticks, a refrigerator magnet in the shape of a pansy, and a packet of razor blades.

If Warden was crazy enough to trust Aaron around him while he was potentially armed with razor blades, then maybe he was crazy enough to trust him with some damn alternative light sources.

**~ o ~**

One last time before he turned in for the night, the man who had been born Norton Waldo Charpentier called up an astrology program on his laptop. Time was when he would have dismissed the whole sun-and-stars thing as worse than pseudo-science—and he knew that most public practitioners of the art were phonies and posers.

Then Eugene had come along, round-shouldered, Coke-bottle-glasses Eugene, a Mob minnow by profession and a recreational mathematician who was never without his pads of graph paper and his pencils of black and blue and red. He loved all numbers equally, including those that described the movements of the planets.

"Ya know, you're a natural communicator with a gift of gab," he had announced to Norton the second time they rubbed elbows at the prison breakfast table. "Your greatest gift is you can grab that opportunity that nobody else is seeing."

Norton had all but choked on his farina, because the description had been that of what could only be the anti-Norton. He had smiled politely, murmured, "Nah, I don't think so," and put it out of his mind.

"Seize the day," Eugene told him a week or so later. "Ya ain't taking advantage of the gifts the universe gives ya, man."

Norton knew exactly what he was. He was a timid, cringing blob with a prissy voice and zero people skills. He wasn't sure why Eugene had picked him to annoy, but he wasn't about to encourage him. He had turned away with a muttered, "Screw you."

"November 19, 1960? Elkton, Maryland?" Eugene had replied. "Around seventeen hundred hours? What, six minutes after your sister? Ringing any frickin' bells?"

Charpentier had glowered at the little jerk's accurate information. "Where'd you get those numbers?"

"I got my sources. That's you, right?" When Norton said nothing, Eugene had continued with his usual genial enthusiasm, "You got a Gemini ascendant, man. And Aquarius in your mid-heaven. You're all about communication and creativity. Why aren'tcha using it?"

 _Communication and creativity_. Hell, if he'd had those, maybe he wouldn't have been such a total goddamn disappointment to his father, who'd expected to sire the next VP in charge of sales for the goddamn family company. Instead, his son had been, like Eugene, all about the numbers. Only with no people skills. No gift of gab. Certainly no noticeable creativity.

"Astrology is horseshit," he'd told Eugene flatly.

"Astrology is all about the tools the universe armed ya with when it sent ya into the world," the Mob minnow had retorted, obviously quoting from something he had read somewhere else. "Ya don't want to use it, that's your call, man. But you're missing out."

Norton's disbelief must have been written all over his face, because Eugene had pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. "Looky here," he had said, stabbing with one nicotine-stained finger at the circle he had drawn on the paper. "You're all back-chart, I can see that. You're all about keeping it in, keeping it back. I get it. But nobody's making ya stay there, man, is all I'm saying."

But his days of doubt were over. Now, he chuckled to himself as he pulled up a chart for the coming day.

Eugene had been right, and astrology had tickled Norton's own love of numbers and patterns. He could and did perform the calculations himself, but he also enjoyed the glitzy software he'd purchased that did everything for him, and then showed it all with bright graphics.

Tomorrow, Moon would be running barefoot all over Mars in Leo, his fourth house of home, heritage, and foundations. Sweet, sweet energies for getting some stuff accomplished around the apartment.

Leo was _Prisoner_ 's seventh house of partners and lovers, and a bleak little house it was, too. Poor guy was all fore-chart, not much inner life to cling to.

Ah, well, that was Prisoner's problem, not Norton's.

Now, as to Prisoner's supporting cast: He used the standard 26 July 1908 birthdate for the FBI, the day Attorney General Bonaparte appointed the first agents. One of his contacts in American history had come up with an approximate time based on old journal entries. It wasn't exact, but it would do. There had been a huge traffic-jam in Cancer and Leo that day, anchored by the energies of that Retrograde Venus that always made Norton grin and picture J. Edgar Hoover in a dress.

He selected the relevant chart and clicked _Update_.

_Yes._

Leo was the Bureau's ninth house. The next day should be a particularly interesting one for them, with hints of travel and foreign cultures and ethics.

**~ o ~**

Her name was Cherish Mottley. She had a dark complexion, perfect posture, intelligent, alert eyes, a heart-shaped face, and hair dyed gold and trimmed close to her scalp. She was 23 years old, a two-year veteran of the U.S. Army's military police. Her fingerprints were all over the February third _New York Times_ that had been used to wrap Aaron Hotchner's personal effects.

She appeared on the BAU conference room screen via webcam, because she was where she had been ever since her deployment in mid-March: on duty in Iraq.

"I'm sorry, sir," she told Morgan, her expression earnest. "I left New York on the third. I was visiting my aunt and my cousins. I'm sure I had a newspaper because I always buy a paper when I take the train, but I can't tell you what I did with it. I coulda left it in the station, or threw it away on a smoke break—there were two, Philly and Harrisburg—or when I changed trains at Pittsburgh. Or I maybe I took it all the way to Cleveland, or maybe I just left it on the seat or in the snack car. I don't recall."

Derek noticed that beside him, Spencer Reid was marking on one of his maps, drawing small green squares around New York City, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. A red triangle already showed up in Harrisburg, and a blue square in Cleveland.

 _This is Furface's territory_ , Morgan realized. _These are his stomping grounds_.

"Did you notice anything or anyone unusual on your trip?" he asked Mottley, more to be thorough than because he expected her to report an old guy with muttonchop whiskers stalking her through train terminals.

"It was real crowded," she said. "'Cause of the ice storm, you know? 'Cause nothing was flying out of there, not for a couple days."

He sent a digital laydown of eight computer-generated faces to her screen there in Iraq, eight faces that included Furface with his sidewhiskers and without them. "Any of these faces look familiar to you?"

She studied them carefully. "Nobody jumps out at me," she said. "Can't say I ever saw any of them before."

"Who picked you up in Cleveland?"

She blinked. "My boyfriend."

"What kind of vehicle does he drive?"

She blinked again. "White Denali."

"Do you know anyone who drives a blue Ford F-150 truck?"

"In Cleveland?"

Morgan sighed. "Anywhere."

She pursed her lips, shook her head. "Nah, not that I can think of. My dad has a truck, but it's a red Ram."

_Another strikeout—and it had felt so positive at first!_

**~ o ~**

It was Thursday, May 20, 2010, heading up toward the noon shave.

He fiddled with the hair at his temples—he hated the way it flip-flopped; he had used gel at his temples for years and years. Now it just…flopped there like the Nineties were back, and he had few happy memories of the Nineties, especially the early part, when he was still trying to figure out exactly how much of his father he had in him (answer: too much).

He took a sip of water, screwed the cap back on, and flung the bottle across to the opposite wall with all of his strength. It didn't help; he was shaking uncontrollably.

_He expects me to believe that I can survive here for five years, to believe that he'll just let me go, just…walk away, knowing who he is, as though nothing happened. Christ, I'd better figure out who he is! _

He ripped the top two pages off the legal pad, balled them up tight, and threw them across the cell, too, blinking back tears of fury and frustration.

_And Jack. Jesus, God, Jack._

He gathered up the bedclothes in his arms and hugged them to his chest. "Jack," he moaned, his voice cracking. "Jack, don't give up on me, I'll get out of here as soon as I can…."


	12. No Dark Sarcasm

The wind rippled in the pale green chintz curtains, the ones with a scattering of red and yellow apples that covered the window above the kitchen sink. In the distance, a dog barked. He turned in his chair and watched his mother's hands. She was using the old mixer, the enormous metal one that she kept under the kitchen counter, the one she had to assemble every time she used it. She had to be baking a cake. She only used the big old mixer when she baked a cake.

He turned again and he saw Haley wearing that oversized pink sweater, the one that she called her _Flashdance_ sweater. She was licking chocolate batter off her forefinger almost seductively, her eyes fixed on his.

He felt profoundly relieved that she was alive. He stood up to cross the room to kiss her.

He tried to say _Hi, gorgeous_ , but no sound emerged. He reached for her, smiling broadly, and tried again. _Hi, gorgeous_.

Still nothing.

As his hands closed on her upper arms, as his mouth hovered just inches above her own, he tried one last time.

"Hi—"

The sound of his own gravelly voice awakened him. Once again he was in the goddamn eight-by-eight cell, lying on his right side and staring at the locked door just a few feet away. He bit back a cry of despair, although he wasn't sure which part was more painful: that he was still a prisoner, or that Haley was still dead.

He sat upright, wrapping the bedclothes around him to ward off the chill.

All of his training, all of his years of working with victims of abductions, of hostages, of slaves—none of it prepared him for the constant dreams of freedom. He was no stranger to dreams that seemed to undo evil. He'd had plenty of them after Haley died—even a few after she left him—and he'd held Jack night after night when the boy awakened to find that his mom was still gone.

The worst dreams so far were the ones where the Team broke into the bunker and heat poured in through the door. Where Morgan, or sometimes Rossi, physically picked him up and carried him like a child out into the anteroom, where Emily was always cuffing the fucking Warden. It was always Emily in that role, and she was being none too gentle. Warden would look at him, sometimes with rage, sometimes with a silent pathetic plea on his face, and Morgan-or-Rossi would say _Forget that motherfucker, Hotch_.

It was, according to the clock of whiskers, somewhere between noon and midnight on Friday, May 21st. A full week had passed since Warden abducted him from his own garage in broad daylight. The last box of "resources" had included food for six days, and this concerned Aaron because only three days had gone by and yet he was finding it harder, rather than easier, to stay calm and patient, to let the Team do what they did best.

He cleaned. He did every exercise, both physical and mental, that he could recall. He read, he wrote, he analyzed. Sometimes, he prayed—badly, clumsily. Without any kind of confidence. He sang—a lot. He sang although his memory for lyrics was pretty feeble, and seemed to be unrelated to his musical preferences.

How else to explain that he'd gone blank a few lines into "Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me," but could sing every damn word of "Do That to Me One More Time"? That he stumbled through "Whip It" but never missed a beat of "Bette Davis Eyes"? That the only one of his favorite songs from his high school years that he seemed to nail perfectly was "Another Brick in the Wall"?

He drank some water, savored a few bites of a Slim Jim, and took another look at his attempt to fulfill Warden's stupid assignment to list all of his teachers. "We don't need no education," he sang softly, noting that Mrs. Bellman's husband had been his swimming coach at summer camp. "We don't need no thought control."

He tapped his pen furiously against the paper, still lost as to the name of his first chemistry teacher, the one who'd vanished so mysteriously mid-semester (not so mysteriously after all; he'd followed his estranged wife to Kentucky and tried to strangle her, although the truth took several months to filter down, in whispers, to the student body).

_Now what the hell was his name?_

Hotchner considered writing _Severus Snape_ , then thought better of it. "No dark sarcasm in the classroom," he sang to himself. "Teachers, leave them kids alone."

Mr. Lutz.

_Got it._

**~ o ~**

He had a broad, warm smile that Derek Morgan desperately wanted to slap right off his warm square face. "Listen up, kids," he said. "I know none of you wants to hear what I say, but you don't have a choice, because you're professionals."

"Don't kill him," Rossi breathed in Derek's ear. "Leave him to me."

"I'm Hector," the visitor from the Hoover Building said, still smiling. "And my specialty is the art of creative thinking. And I'm here to brainstorm with you—because you're the Bureau's best resource when it comes to Aaron Hotchner—about how and why he might have chosen to drop out of sight. There are no wrong answers, people. This is all about brainstorming."

"About—Hotch deliberately arranging for somebody to kidnap him?" JJ's voice squeaked and her blue eyes were enormous.

"Fact is," Hector said, leaning in confidentially, "we're dealing in an interesting situation here, because somebody returned Agent Hotchner's creds, his watch, his keys—but they pulled the pictures of his little boy right out of there. Now, anyone have any bright ideas about why any UNSUB would keep those pictures?"

Emily Prentiss leaned forward, a dangerously friendly expression on her face. "Are you for real?"

"It's all about freeing yourself from finding what have to be the _right_ answers," Hector assured her. "About seeing options you're missing because they don't fit into your current mindset."

"We go chasing after the idea that Hotch faked his own abduction, and that's exactly where we'll end up," she retorted. "Free from the right answers."

"Agent Hobbes-Gutierrez," Erin Strauss said from her observer's seat in the far corner, "I can understand their reluctance to participate in this exercise. They've lived with the video of Aaron's abduction for a week. It's hard to believe that a man would willingly set himself up for that kind of abuse. Perhaps you can—"

"Please call me Hector, Erin," the agent said with a toothy grin. "We have no hard evidence that Agent Hotchner was genuinely shocked. He's seen enough people Tasered to know how to fake it. Not that he necessarily _did_ , mind you—but it's a possibility that we have to address at some point, and better sooner than later, I always say. And I appreciate all of you dragging yourselves out of bed to join me on a Saturday morning—"

"No," David Rossi rumbled. "That's only you Hoover Building types who work a nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday week. We don't have that luxury. And if you weren't here, we'd be here anyway, working the evidence, following leads."

"Wait," said Spencer Reid, unexpected authority in his voice. "I see where you're leading us, Agent Hobbes-Gutierrez."

"Hector."

Reid's face showed nothing. "Agent," he repeated serenely. "If it's gonna satisfy some official administrative requirement for us to pretend that today's April Fool's Day, well, fine. I'm here to play, _Agent_."

Drawing a deep breath, Spencer said, "Let's consider that Agent Hotchner's love for his son is neither as deep nor as automatic as we've always observed. Let's presume, since we're spending our Saturday morning in the Twilight Zone, that having Jack was Haley's idea, that the whole pregnancy thing was a ruse to tighten her grip on Hotch, who'd have preferred to remain childless. Let's presume that, once he was free of having to fake the good-father thing for Haley, he felt free to give up the good-daddy pose and get rid of his undesirable family responsibilities."

Waves of negativity, of hostility, rose in the room but Reid seemed impervious to them. "Let's assume that he faked his abduction so that he could get out from under parenthood and the weight of his Bureau responsibilities. He has a girlfriend we know nothing about." He turned and smiled at each of his teammates in turn. "She lives in Michigan and he's gone to join her there."

"Michigan," Hector echoed encouragingly. "Interesting choice of locales. You see what kind of information we can derive from a simple relaxation of the rules of gotta-be-right? Whatever triggered your choice of Michigan for his destination, ah, Spencer? Or is it Spence?"

Reid returned neither his smile nor his enthusiasm. "Doctor," he said, his voice stony.

"Beg your pardon?"

"It's Doctor, _Agent_. And it's the point furthest west in the plot of our UNSUB's movements."

"Her name is Lenore," Rossi contributed, fiddling idly with his phone as he spoke. "She's tall, with long black hair. She has something to do with lions."

"A zookeeper," Reid suggested.

"Or a lion tamer," said Rossi. "Aaron was irresistibly drawn to her whip and chair."

Hector frowned. "Now you're not being serious," he said.

"But if there are no right or wrong answers, every suggestion is serious," Prentiss protested. "I'm down with Lenore the lion tamer. He met her at an ice skating rink in Seattle, before he came back to head the BAU unit. He kept a separate, prepaid phone to maintain contact with her, knowing that Garcia wouldn't be able to track their communications."

The visiting agent turned toward Rossi. "What suggested lions to you?" he asked.

Rossi shrugged, "Michigan. Detroit. Detroit Lions."

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm sure you are," Rossi said, his smile as broad as the creative-thinking specialist's. "It's a football team. The Detroit Lions."

"Ah." Hector frowned. "Too obvious," he said, shaking his head. "Too logical."

_Logic is suddenly something to avoid?_

"Fine, OK, I can play," Morgan said at last. "Long as we're wasting our time and, ah, yours, Agent Hobbes-Gutierrez."

"Hector, _please_."

"See, you can't get locked into heterosexuality, either, _Agent_ ," Morgan continued. "If Hotch is hiding shit from us, then there's no telling how much of what we think we know about him is wrong. I say this is no Lenore. This is some ripped pretty-boy from his secret days with the CIA, the ones he doesn't talk about."

"Interpol," Emily corrected. "Definitely Interpol."

Morgan raised an eyebrow at her. "And why?"

"Fewer rules. Greater latitude for—interesting motivations."

"And he's not ripped," JJ contributed grimly. "He's a short little thing, a professional Charles Manson impersonator in Vegas. They met when they were playing in the same Aerosmith tribute band."

Agent Hobbes-Gutierrez's lip twitched with what might have been dismay.

It was the first thing Morgan had enjoyed all morning.

**~ o ~**

Since it was a lovely Sun-in-Gemini evening, he decided to sling the canvas bag of Prisoner's foodstuffs over his shoulder and hike the mile-and-a-half of switchbacking paths that led from the stables to the cavern where the entrance to the bunker was concealed.

One thing that frustrated him was the fact that Prisoner seemed genuinely unable to place him. He knew that he'd changed, both physically and personally, in the seventeen years since they'd first taken each other's measure in Baltimore. OK, so he'd dropped a few pounds and picked up some people skills—but you'd think that the whole conspiracy-to-convict-an-innocent-man thing would raise some alarms.

Surely, he couldn't have screwed over _that many_ defendants, could he? He'd have been caught, right? The Bar Association would have disciplined him, said, _oh, dear, you've been a naughty, naughty boy_ , rapped his knuckles, sent him to bed without dessert, or some similar maddeningly meaningless punishment. _Censure_ or something. You'd think, though—wouldn't you?—that if he'd made it a habit, the FBI would have wanted no part of him, right?

By the time he got down that wretched, wobbly elevator, he was in no mood to be civil.

He shoved the gate open and called, "Are you awake?"

"Does it matter?" the dark baritone called back.

_Okie-dokie. Somebody else isn't in the mood to be civil, either._

Norton dropped the canvas bag in the storage area and moved over in front of the cell, which sat along the far wall of a much larger room. The survivalists and supremacists who had first taken advantage of this location had obviously had much grander plans than two steel cells and that long cage-thing, whatever they'd meant it to be, along the far left edge of the room. Some day, he hoped to find more documentation than the little he had discovered already.

He slipped the latch on the square window, to the right of the door on his side, the left of the door on Prisoner's side, the window with the red steel rod running down its middle.

Whereas previously he had risen to greet his captor, this evening Prisoner sat on his cot, one knee up, with a water bottle in his fingers. His cot was made up. He wore his sweater and had an extra blanket folded loosely beside him. He was using the cushion for the chair as an extra pillow, and the chair as some sort of table. He looked through the window at Norton with a combination of caution and curiosity.

"What's your name?" Norton asked him.

He barely blinked. "Prisoner, sir."

"And mine?"

He shook his head. "I have no idea," he replied, his tone calm, thoughtful. "I know I'm to call you Warden, and I also know I should recognize you. But I don't."

"That wasn't the answer I wanted."

Prisoner nodded. "Then my answer is, 'Warden, sir.'"

"Your statements."

The man sighed and shifted positions slightly, then read the paragraphs printed on his walls in a low monotone. He seemed no closer to identifying with the text than he had been when Norton had first dragged him in.

_This will be a longer haul than I'd anticipated._

"What was the first federal prosecution you participated in?" Norton asked him.

Prisoner gave him a what's-the-catch look, but replied, "Jurek, Wilhousky, et al."

"Your second?"

"Wassermann, Sinclair, et al."

"Your third?"

Prisoner unscrewed the cap of his water bottle. "Ianotti, Bianchi, et al."

"Your fourth?"

A long sip of water. "Kelly, Sterman, et al."

"How many prosecutions did you participate in before you joined the FBI?"

Prisoner blinked. "Fifteen."

"And on how many were you lead counsel?"

"The last nine. Jaffee, Benson, et al., was my first lead." His face appeared relaxed, but it was clear to Norton that his captive was studying him closely.

Warden produced the handcuffs from his pocket. "Arms out."

Prisoner stood up and approached the window warily. "Which way?" he asked.

"The usual way," Norton said. "Forward." He held the handcuffs where the lawyer could reach them and watched as the man fastened them onto his wrists. He noticed that Prisoner made sure that he could see that they had clicked into place securely.

Prisoner frowned at the cuffs for a moment, then said, "Permission to speak?"

"Briefly." _What is your game, lawyer?_

"Sir, if it's all the same to you, I think I would prefer to face the other way." His gaze drifted up from his wrists to Norton's eyes, but he said nothing further.

Obviously, the lawyer believed that whatever intelligence he derived from studying Norton's features would be well worth the additional awkwardness and heightened sense of vulnerability of that position.

_Do you think I didn't learn all about keeping my expression blank during those five years in prison?_

He took the key from the pocket of his khakis and unfastened the cuffs. "Turn around."

**~ o ~**

Jesus Christ, it was almost midnight!

In the privacy of his office, Rossi kept looking at the same words, over and over. The same matrices, as printed out from the threat assessment software used by the Bureau, as drawn in Morgan's rapid Sharpie strokes on a legal pad, and as sketched with Reid's pencil on the back of a restaurant place mat.

Purpose taken: to kill, as a hostage, to interrogate, to punish BAU/Bureau

Outcome: Dead.

Dead attempting to escape, dead under torture, dead because he wouldn't cooperate.

Given eight days gone, no demands and no boasting from the UNSUB, the only reasonable interpretations were that Hotch was dead or (distantly) that he was being interrogated.

 _And what would anyone interrogate him about?_ That was the critical question, then. The BAU maintained no state secrets.

Yeah, there was that outlier possibility, what Rossi now called the "Hector Factor," that Aaron had arranged the whole thing so he could get free of a cloying family, a child he was unable or unwilling to care for. Aaron skipping out from under his responsibilities, maybe to set up housekeeping with a foxy blackjack dealer, a femme fatale from the Mossad. A pretty boy from law school.

A lion tamer.

The "Hector Factor" had to be there—the outcomes matrix demanded that all possibilities be accounted for—but if Aaron had done anything like that, then he wasn't Aaron anymore. Not the Aaron they knew and loved, or at least respected, anyway. Aliens had stolen his brain.

Case closed.

_Dead._

He poured himself another drink and stared morosely into the shadows.


	13. Game On

 

When Warden entered his cell, shoving his little hand truck in front of him, he laid two boxes on the bed, and left an additional box on the dolly. That was potentially good news. Any new object, any new food item, had potential promise. And not just because there was the chance of discovering something that would be useful in escape, or in learning something valuable about Warden—any new thing also provided a few minutes' relief from the agonizing boredom of captivity.

Also, interestingly, he didn't see Warden's Enforcer protruding from his back pocket.

"Your assignments are in the same place as before? In _Faultlines_?"

"Yes."

He'd expected Warden to inspect the cell first, but instead he reached for the book on the shelf above the sink, brought it down and laid it on his lap as he sat on the bed beside the two boxes.

He unfolded the pages carefully and scanned them, a thoughtful look on his face. "Error on page four," he said after a moment. "failure to capitalize Thy. In two—no, three places. Looks like you'll have to re-do your Act of Contrition assignment, Prisoner. Oh, and here's another one. Traditionally, the pronouns that relate to the name of the Deity are capitalized, as you can see if you consult the original I supplied for you."

He looked up with a bland, pleasant smile on his face. "Before I leave, you will rewrite this assignment completely, legibly, and without error, or when I leave, I take these boxes with me." He patted the cartons with what seemed like affection.

"Now, as to the other assignment—" He opened the second set of folded pages and studied them in silence. "It was Lusk, Prisoner. _Lusk_. Not Lutz. Herman James Lusk. Think of Jack the Ripper and his 'From Hell, Mr. Lusk' communication."

So far, Aaron had managed to keep his own face expressionless, even through the nursery-school shaming tone Warden had taken about his errors. But this—this took his breath away. It hadn't occurred to him that the little dickwad already knew who Aaron's teachers had been. He struggled to keep the professional mask up, but it was hard.

 _Damn_ , it was hard.

"Burning Hills Country Day School," Warden said, pronouncing each word with relish. "Class of '82, graduated a year early, didn't you?" He beamed at Aaron. "Such an ambitious boy—those dark, angry eyes and that girly '80s hair. One might even say _driven_."

_Christ, does he have my senior picture?_

"What do you want from me?" he rasped.

Warden's gaze was cold. "You don't have permission to speak."

"Fine," Hotchner replied. "May I speak, Warden, please?" He didn't even try to keep the anger and the resentment from his voice or his features because the only critical item left on his agenda was to disguise the extent of his desperation.

"You may not." Warden refolded the assignment sheets and tucked them into the pocket of his jacket. "Your next assignment is to list all 72 members of your class in alphabetical order. You'll probably want to make notes before you do that. It's fortunate that you were a young man of privilege, one who attended such an _exclusive_ school. Even with a splendid memory like yours—and it is outstanding—can you imagine recreating a graduating class of 520, like mine?"

_He does. The sonofabitch has my yearbook!_

_And he went to a large urban school, probably Catholic. Why else the obsession with the Act of Contrition?_

He forced himself to find a polite smile. "Was that a question, sir?"

Warden was unamused. He reached over with his right hand and withdrew the Enforcer from the carton next to him. "How difficult will this be?" he asked. "And that, too, was rhetorical, Prisoner." He thumbed the power button on and off twice, almost idly. "So—for next time, the list of your classmates. For today, while I'm working, you will present me with a fresh, error-free 200 repetitions of the Act of Contrition." He rose up on one flank and stuck the Enforcer in his back pocket. "And now, let's check on your housekeeping."

He watched Warden bustle around the cell, collecting empty water bottles in one of the empty cardboard cartons, checking for dust on the shelf, under the sink and the bed.

Once satisfied (or maybe disappointed; it was hard to read him), he turned his attention to Hotchner. He looked him over head to toe, even unzipped his sweater, examined his scrubs, _sniffed_ him as if in search of offensive body odors.

He ached to ask Warden, _Do you do that to your wife? Do you sniff her for potential evidence of infidelity?_

Part of his problem was that Warden simply didn't present as a married man. Was it possible, Aaron wondered, that Warden adored Diana from a distance? That he was a stalker, rather than a husband? That might explain why there were no photos of the two together, not even in Diana's blissful soft-focus late pregnancy portrait, or the one where she sat up, tired but glowing, in a hospital bed, holding a newborn in a pink receiving blanket.

 _Maybe your mind is the only place she's your wife_ , he thought as Warden studied Aaron's ears, his hair, with narrowed eyes. _No self-respecting woman would ever tolerate the level of control that you need to have over people._

Again, Warden opened his sweater and inspected the scrubs. "When was the last time you laundered these?" he asked.

Hotch knew the answer—that very morning, some time between midnight and noon of May 22, 2010. A Saturday. Day Nine in this cell. "Not long ago," he replied carefully. "Probably within the last day or so. I have no dependable way of calculating time or date."

"Liar," his captor said, but he didn't follow it up with a challenge.

Warden tugged on the scrubs hard enough that Aaron was almost ready to reassess his take on the little man and decide he was a sexual sadist after all, when Warden abruptly plunged his hand into the left-hand pocket of his pants.

_Oh. Crap._

"And what's this?" he said, withdrawing the three sheets of legal paper that Hotch had folded into a tight square. "Your version of _Letter from a Birmingham Jail_? A list of ways you plan to wreak your revenge on me? Maybe a bit of D-I-Y porn to help you beat off when frustration creeps up on you?"

_Calm down, Slick. Use this. Wasn't he just asking you about these very names?_

He located his Aaron-fucking-Hotchner game face. "No, sir," he replied in his best deferential courtroom manner. Voice soft. Dignified, his posture reflecting as much control as any man can manage when his hands are cuffed to the wall behind him.

Warden obviously expected him to say more, but he resisted the temptation to explain away what he had been writing.

Warden seated himself on the cot again and slowly unfolded the yellow lined legal paper. He frowned for an instant, then turned it sideways, then frowned again. Getting it rotated the right way helped some, but Hotchner's notoriously awful handwriting seemed to baffle him. His brow furrowed, he studied the sheets.

And then he inhaled sharply.

Hotchner's heart thudded and he memorized the exact location on the sheet where Warden's eyes had rested when he— _figured it out_.

"Interesting mental exercise," Warden said, his own voice as even and bland as Aaron's, but his eyes and nose giving him away, his pupils dilated, his nostrils flared. He refolded the sheets and put them in his pocket with Aaron's assignments. "I'll leave the one box here for you and you can put things away. The other—well, that can wait until you've completed a legible and error-free version of those Act of Contrition repetitions you agreed to write for me. You do recall agreeing to do them for me on my previous visit, correct? In exchange for asking me another question?"

Hotch nodded and murmured, "Yes, sir."

 _The far right side of the sheet, he was looking at the far right side of the sheet, so it's one of_ _those three cases. God, thank God, there's progress_ , he thought, so grateful to have any kind of idea where to look that Warden could have assigned him another thousand repetitions and he would have accepted them gladly.

_I will identify you._

_You loser, you pathetic stalker of other men's wives…._

He watched as Warden lifted one carton back onto his little hand truck, watched him engage his little magnet toy on the door, watched him saunter out with his fussy little gait, watched him close the door.

In his efforts to figure out where Warden had met him, Aaron had made five columns each on three sheets of paper, each column representing one of the cases he had participated in when he was at the Department of Justice. He'd occupied himself part of his time beginning to fill in names of lawyers, defendants, witnesses—anyone he could think of from each case. It was a harder job than it might seem. Most of those prosecutions had been huge, tangled things with a dozen or so defendants, five or six lawyers, and long witness lists.

But some name on a far right column of one page had made Warden gasp. That narrowed it to three cases.

He was on to something, and he could easily recreate what he had written, what Warden had taken away.

When Warden released him from his cuffs, Aaron actually smiled at him.

_Game on, Dickwad._

**~ o ~**

"I don't know how long Strauss will let us put one hundred percent into Hotch," Emily Prentiss sighed, sinking deep into Penelope Garcia's purple beanbag chair. "I know she wants to keep our assets focused on him, and what's happened to him, but—if something big comes up I don't think she'll be able to keep justifying it."

"Beer, white wine, or Diet Pepsi?" her hostess inquired, apparently unfazed that she had a half-drunk profiler calling on her at three o'clock on a Sunday morning. "I recommend the Diet Pepsi."

"Nothing diet," Emily said. "But you're right, nothing alcoholic either. What I need is a milkshake or something."

"Done," Garcia said, and popped to her feet. "I have chocolate mint ice cream and a blender. How was the brainstorming session?"

"Oh, my God, what a total buffoon," Prentiss groaned, closing her eyes, leaning back, and hoping the room would stop spinning. "He even pissed off Strauss. 'Call me Hector, Erin.' I thought she was gonna throw up."

"Really?" Garcia called from the kitchen. "Kevin went to one of his seminars and said it really freed him up from locking himself into expectations. This Hector guy's supposed to be an expert at freeing up your mind for problem-solving. "

"In what universe would that be happening? Honestly, Rossi started spinning this story about how Hotch ran off with this lady lion tamer from Michigan, and Agent Moron is just leading him on, all excited that he's thinking outside the box—"

The blender whined for a minute or so, then Garcia reentered the room with a tall glass of something thick and pale green. "Here," she said. "A lion tamer? Really?"

Prentiss's eyes flew open. "I notice that you don't seem surprised at the idea that Hotch ran off, just that he ran off with a lion tamer."

"Of course not," Penelope said. "Take it. Drink it. Sober up, girlfriend. It's an outlier. You have to look at every conceivable possibility, even the crazy ones."

"You saw the video. What do you think? Was that a man faking his own abduction so he could go—oh, I don't know—do a Gideon? Just run away from who he is, what he does, never mind his own son?"

Garcia perched on the arm of the couch. "Do I believe there's a mathematically significant chance that he faked that? Of course not! But it is it impossible? We see the impossible every day in this job." She gazed with troubled eyes at Emily. "But I'd rather waste time, you know, engaging in stupid speculation than giving up hope."

Emily's chin jutted upward. "Nobody's giving up hope."

"Rossi is. You can tell just by looking at him. It's ripping him apart."

"No way."

Garcia twisted a kitchen towel in her hands. "It's true. He looks like he's ready to retire. Or just…fade out. It's kinda sad."

**~ o ~**

The former Norton Charpentier tried to open the cabinet quietly. Neither of the Hawthornes slept well or deeply, and he had no desire to interfere with the elderly couple's slumbers at nearly four in the morning.

He was in their office, which they persistently called Ted's office, although Bren's books on the history of organized labor lined the shelves and her desktop computer took up half the east wall. The only evidence that Ted had anything to do with the room was a glass-fronted bookcase of mechanical engineering textbooks to which he'd contributed either chapters or editorial services. The rest of the room was an explosion of Civil War reenactment minutiae.

Norton thought that he was moving noiselessly, so when the light in the hall clicked on, he was startled. "It's just me," he called out softly, not wanting to awaken whichever Hawthorne was still in bed.

"I know," Bren's voice whispered back. "Heard your car way back before midnight, wondered when you were planning to show your face."

"I just came in to make some copies," he told her. "Do you have any white legal-sized paper? All I can find is—"

"That pastel stuff from the spring edition of the newsletter," Bren finished with a light laugh. "Sorry, Sarge, but that's all we've got."

"I don't mind it," Norton assured her, "but I didn't want to run you short if you had plans for it later."

Mrs. Hawthorne appeared in the doorway in flowered pajamas and bare feet. "What's got you up and making copies in the middle of the night?"

Norton indicated the sheet of lined legal-sized paper he was smoothing on the aged copier. "I'm in the middle of a little mystery," he said, "and I want to make notes, but I don't want to mark on the originals."

"Goody," said Bren. "I love a mystery."

"No, no—not that kind of mystery." The last thing he needed was the Hawthornes taking any interest in some of his activities in the area. They were sweet people; too sweet to get mixed up, even tangentially, in his project. "I'm just trying to decipher some notes that somebody else made." The copier spat out three copies of the relevant page, page one, of Prisoner's notes, one in pink, one in yellow, and one in baby blue. He looked at the other two sheets and he almost passed on copying them, but in the end he decided to make three copies of each of them, too.

"Cheese and crackers," Bren said, leaning over the table and turning the original of page three so the writing faced her. "You can read these chicken-scratches?"

"Just barely," he laughed. "That's why I want extra copies to make notes on."

She shook her head in sympathy. "Well, I'm about to make myself a cup of hot chocolate. You want something while I'm up?"

"No, thanks, Bren, I—crap," he finished as one page seized up in the rollers and the whole printer shuddered to a halt. "One of these days I have to bring you guys a printer from the Twenty-first century."

"We wouldn't use it, honey," Bren said with a sigh. "That thing may be old and cranky but it's sure cheap to run. Those new machines, they run you a fortune in ink supplies. You sure you don't want some hot chocolate?"

"Positive, thank you," he told her, and watched her fondly as she headed back down the hall toward the kitchen.

**~ o ~**

He was pretty sure that it was around noon on Sunday, May 23rd, his tenth day in the cell. His left wrist, hand, and fingers ached ferociously, but he had all 200 copies of the damned Act of Contrition written out and error-free—he had checked them over obsessively—and as legibly printed as he could manage. He set the sheets out in the open on the seat of the chair, on top of the pad he used for note-taking.

There had been some surprises among the resources in the one box Warden had left behind. In addition to the endless supply of peanut butter-and-honey sandwiches, the assortment of fruits and vegetables, there were three more Slim Jims, several snack packs of cheese and crackers, and a six-pack of chocolate pudding cups and a plastic spoon.

Oh, and four more legal pads and an entire ten-pack of Papermate Write Bros ballpoints. Lots more writing in his future, it seemed.

But that was fine.

Whoever the hell Warden was, somebody, probably more than one somebody—whom Aaron had listed as having played some part in his fifth, his tenth, or his fifteenth prosecution—was a familiar enough name that it had made Warden gasp, had made his eyes widen slightly.

_Whine. Rattle._

_And I haven't shaved._

He glanced around and assured himself that his cell was in order, then deliberately walked over to the sink and collected his soap and razor. He was so angry, so stoked, that he wasn't sure he could shave without ripping his jaw to shreds, but he suspected that Warden would interrupt him. He couldn't finish the job if he was cuffed to the window, anyway.

He ran water, worked up some suds with the key-lime-scented shaving soap, and began to work the lather onto his cheeks.

"Are you awake?"

_Someday I should say No, just to see what happens._

"Yes," he called back.

He heard the latch slip on the square window.

"You can finish that later," Warden said.

_Nailed that one._

He rinsed his face and dried it, then turned to his captor. He wondered whether the man had a bolthole of his own where he could nap.

 _No. He's changed his clothes, just like the first time! Either he lied and he lives close to here or he's prepared to live out of his car when he's in the area,_ he decided.

"Hands," Warden said. "Facing inward."

When the process was over, when he was facing Warden, seated on the cot with his trusty hand truck and its two extra boxes of resources beside him, he said, "Permission to speak?"

"No."

Warden shuffled slowly through Aaron's second attempt at completing the assignment correctly and nodded. "Better," he said. Then he caught sight of the top sheet of the legal pad. "'Page three, requests,'" he read aloud. "What happened to pages one and two?"

Another of those questions about which there was no reason to lie. "I threw them away," Hotch replied evenly. "They're in the waste basket."

"A second set of scrubs? 'Scrubs'? That's your uniform, Prisoner." Warden looked up at him. "You have a problem with it?"

"It would be useful to have a second...uniform to wear while the originals are drying."

"'Useful'?"

"Nice," Hotch conceded. "Yes. Useful, too. Even if I keep ironing them so they dry faster, it's hard to do that when you're wrapped in a sheet like a toga."

"A clock? Really?"

"Really."

"Do you think it'll make your time pass any more quickly?"

"Honestly? No," he replied, then added, "I mean, no, Warden. But I have to calculate how long it is from day to day so I don't run out of food and water."

Warden raised an eyebrow. "Matches? Candles?"

"The power went out for a while the other day," Aaron said, trying to look earnest and honest. "Or night."

"And—you're afraid of the dark?"

He decided not to answer that one. He just stood there, waiting for Warden to tire of his little game.

"The answer to all of the above is 'No,'" Warden told him with one of his smirks. "Although I'll keep them in mind for rewards as time passes."

"Technically, sir," he said, weighing his words carefully, "I didn't plan to show you that list or to make any of those requests at this time. I hope you won't count that toward my two questions."

"So you have no requests?"

_OK, Slick. Now or never._

"I have one request."

Warden's lip twitched. "I'll just bet you do," he said cheerily. "Go ahead. It'll count as one of your questions, however." The smirk grew to a grin. "And I'm always more interested when I'm addressed with respect."

Internally, Aaron thought, _Someday, I will kill you. I'm living for two things only: Jack, and the moment I beat the life out of you._

What he said was, "As a prisoner, sir, I request the right to communicate by mail with my loved ones."

"Do you understand why you don't have that privilege? And it's a privilege, Prisoner, not a right."

Hotchner didn't return the man's smile. "No, I don't understand why. And it's a right."

"It's a privilege, Prisoner," the little man snapped. "Superseded by your right—which I did _not_ have, by the way—to be free from the fear of being abused, beaten, and molested by brutal career-criminal inmates and sadistic, borderline-personality guards."

Hotch's professional mask slipped away completely and he had no interest in trying to recover it. "And _you don't call this abuse_?" he blazed. "Enforced solitary confinement, having to watch every goddamn word because you're the one with the cattle prod? Punished because of _poor penmanship_? You don't think maybe I'd rather take my chances on a fair fight in the shower than live like this? What fucking planet do you live on, _Warden_?"

"Says the man whose concept of legal ethics is so fluid or slipshod that he sent an innocent man to prison for almost five years," Warden snarled, rising to his feet. "The man who cost me everything I ever loved, ever cared about, and paid nothing— _nothing_ —for his crimes."

Aaron ignored him. "My second question," he said, his tone just barely civil, "is, 'How's your wife, Warden?'"

And as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew he'd made a grave tactical error. He'd read the signs completely wrong. Warden looked utterly stricken, and the pain that glistened in his eyes wasn't that of a man in love with a woman who could never be his. It went much deeper.

_Oh, God, oh God: She really was his wife, and she left him._

"I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it. Motivated less by fear of punishment than by the look of bleak despair on his captor's face, so reminiscent of the way he'd felt when Haley walked out on him, he pleaded, "I'm sorry, Warden. I was completely out of line."

"And this is the difference between me and your standard prison guard," the little man said softly. "If I were to act on my emotions, I would pick up that chair and keep beating you with it until it turned to splinters in my hands."

His quiet response frightened Hotchner more than rage might have. "Please believe me, I'm sorry that I said that," he whispered.

Warden released the foot brake on the hand truck. "I suspect that you'll understand why I'm not inclined to give you anything but the most basic necessities at the moment," he said, his voice hushed, rigidly controlled.

"Yes, sir."

Warden tried for a small smile and failed. "Then let's both look on the bright side of this," he said gently. "In the end, this will work for good. A humbled prisoner is one who's on the road to becoming a penitent prisoner."

He reached into the top carton and extracted something square wrapped in a plastic bag, and a small paper bag. These he left on the cot.

"My absence this time will be longer than my previous ones," he told Hotch in a dispirited tone. "And that is unrelated to anything that happened here."

Hotchner stood motionless as Warden nodded faintly and left the cell. As his hands were uncuffed. As he heard Warden's unusually slow, plodding progress back toward the elevator.

_A humbled prisoner is one who's on the road to…aw, Christ._

_And I'm already showing the first signs of Stockholm Syndrome._


	14. Tactical Shifts

 

Derek Morgan scowled as his desk phone rang. His head throbbed from lack of sleep and frustration, his stomach was knotted like an old rag, and he seriously wanted to punch something—or someone—out. Nearly two weeks had passed and there still wasn't a shred of significant progress on finding Hotchner. Sure, they'd had a few good leads, but nothing had panned out.

_We don't even know if he's dead or alive, dammit!_

The phone continued to ring insistently. Morgan wanted to ignore it, knowing any of the Team would've called him on his cell if they had news about Hotch, but there was always a chance it was some outside law enforcement agency calling. And of course, it could be something to do with a new case. Unfortunately, crime hadn't stopped just because his friend and boss had been abducted.

He scooped up the receiver and growled, "Morgan."

"Agent Morgan."

Oh God, it was Strauss, sounding disgustingly refreshed and in control. He tried to push all emotion out of his voice. "Yes, ma'am?"

"I'd like you and Agent Rossi to come to my office. Now, please."

 _'Please,' my ass._ He knew an order when he heard one. He also knew he had a job to do, and spending time in Strauss's office when Hotch was still out there somewhere, in God knows what condition, counting on them, wondering why they hadn't found him yet...well, it galled him. He had no choice, though, so he said, "Yes, ma'am, I'll get him and we'll be right there."

"Thank you," Strauss said drily, and hung up.

Morgan forced himself to place the receiver down gently. "No, thank _you_ ," he muttered, and headed out in search of Rossi.

The senior profiler spent little time in his own office, and sure enough, it was empty when Morgan poked his head inside. On a hunch, he walked back to the conference room and sure enough, Rossi was there alone, reclining dangerously far back in one of the office chairs, eyes closed, his fingers laced behind his head. A steaming cup of coffee sat on the table beside him, a whiteboard covered with photos, notes, and diagrams nearby.

"Morning, Morgan," Rossi called out softly, eyes still closed.

"Morning, Rossi. Didn't realize you had eyes in the back of your head," he said, chuckling.

Rossi swung around in his chair, opened his eyes, and grinned. "With Hotch gone, you're the only other male likely to come in here this time of day. Well, there's Reid, but he wears those soft-soled shoes. And it isn't hard to tell your step from the ladies'."

"I hope not," Morgan said, smiling, but the smile fell quickly away. "Hate to do this to you, my friend, but Strauss wants to see us both in her office. You can probably guess why."

Rossi took a quick gulp of his coffee, then got to his feet. "Yeah, but let's hope we're both wrong."

Wordlessly the two men descended the stairs and made their way to Section Chief Strauss's office.

Alita, her assistant, waved them through with a smile. "Go on in, agents. She's expecting you."

Morgan knocked once, to be polite, then opened the door to Strauss's inner office and went in, Rossi on his heels.

Strauss pushed aside a small pile of paperwork, removed her glasses. "Take a seat, agents."

"Ma'am, if you don't mind, I'd rather—" Morgan began, but Strauss cut him off.

"Sit _down_ , please, Agent Morgan, and you too, David."

Morgan exchanged a quick glance with Rossi. Did Strauss know something about Aaron's case that they didn't?

"All right," she said abruptly. "No sense in beating around the bush here. It's been two weeks since Agent Hotchner was abducted. Your team, and indeed almost everyone in the entire unit, has been working nearly non-stop since that time to locate him."

"Ma'am—" Morgan said, but again Strauss refused to let him speak.

"Just a moment, Agent Morgan," she said, sitting upright in her chair. "Let me finish, please."

It took all Morgan's self-control, but he managed a respectful nod.

"In the two weeks Agent Hotchner's been missing, we've had no contact from his abductors, no sightings of him, and, thankfully, have found no body. We've worked with dozens of other agencies. and every law enforcement officer from Maine to Key West is on the lookout for Aaron." She studied each man's face in turn. "And nothing. It's as if—well, I hate clichés, but it's as if he disappeared into thin air. Meanwhile, other cases have been coming in. As much as I would like to focus exclusively on finding Aaron and bringing him back, protocol requires that I order you to stand down from his case and move on to others. The second unit will continue to follow up any leads that come in on Agent Hotchner."

In an instant Morgan was on his feet, flushed with anger. "Ma'am, with all due respect, what you said is _not_ correct. We _have_ had contact from his abductor, in the form of an envelope containing Hotch's credentials, wallet, and keys. True, there was no message in the package, but so what? It tells us he's still out there, and he's counting on us to bring him home."

Strauss frowned at him. "It does no such thing. Just because the UNSUB sent us Aaron's things doesn't mean he's still alive. In fact, it could be argued just as strongly that it indicates the opposite."

Morgan took a deep breath, struggling to maintain a civil tone. "Ma'am, Hotch is the leader of this team. He's one of our own—no, it's more than that. He's _family_ as far as I'm concerned. And if any one of us—including _you_ , ma'am—were the victim, he'd never give up."

"Agent Morgan, I'm not unsympathetic," Strauss said, giving him a wan smile. "I want Agent Hotchner back as much as you do. He's a good man, and he's gone through a lot the past couple of years."

Rossi spoke up. "That's right, Erin. And that's why we need more than ever to stay on the job."

Strauss turned to him and shook her head. "I'm sorry, David. The Bureau can't be seen as putting one of its own above the public. If we just had some definitive proof that Aaron was still alive, perhaps I could justify the additional work, but as things stand, both protocol and budgetary concerns dictate—"

The throbbing in Morgan's temples sped up, threatened to explode. "Ma'am, you've got to give us more time!" He leaned over Strauss's desk, gripping its edge so hard his knuckles ached. "It's not as though we've got nothing. The lab finally managed to extract some DNA from the UNSUB's shirt we found in that Dumpster."

"That was two days ago, Agent Morgan. You know as well as I that if they'd found a match to that DNA they'd have notified me—us—by now." She eyed him coolly. "Now please remove your hands from my desk and take a seat."

Morgan straightened up as though he'd been slapped and glared back at her. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but if you refuse this request I'm afraid I'm going to have to offer my resignation from the Bureau. I will not let Hotch down."

Strauss's look was pure ice. "I fail to see how removing yet another agent from our active roster will help being Agent Hotchner home, Derek."

While a small part of Morgan was thinking, _Don't call me Derek, ma'am_ , Rossi jumped to his feet.

"Hold on there, Morgan! There's no need to go that far." He turned to Strauss. "I've got an idea—a suggestion to make."

The Section Chief flashed him a look of annoyance, but said, "Well? What is it, David?"

Rossi gave them both one of his Sphinx looks. "First, let's all just sit back and take a deep breath."

Taking the hint, Morgan dropped back into his chair, but he felt anything but calm. "What, Rossi? You know something I don't?"

"Nothing like that, Morgan," Rossi assured him. "But here's the situation. I came back to the Bureau because I love the work, not because I need the money. I propose, Erin, that you temporarily assign me full-time to Hotch's case, and the rest of the team can go ahead and work new cases. I'll keep everyone informed of my progress, and if I find anything actionable I'll call you both, any time, day or night. When this is over and we have Hotch back, I'll rejoin the team."

Morgan shook his head, said, "Come on, Rossi, you can't handle it on your own, one man can't—"

"I'm inclined to agree with Agent Morgan on that, David," Strauss said sourly. "And we'll still be down a man."

"Look, if the situation calls for it, I can always sit in on a case, or confer with the team online. And I won't be alone. On the team's off-time we can always discuss any ideas or leads I find. As for boots on the ground, we've got hundreds of police, Staties, highway patrolmen, hell, probably even park rangers combing the whole East Coast for Aaron."

Morgan watched Strauss as she sat for several moments weighing the senior profiler's arguments.

With a sudden grin, Rossi added, "And what's more, Erin, I have an advantage that Agent Morgan doesn't. Resignation won't hamper _my_ career in the least. So if you rule against me, I'll be the one to go."

Morgan kept his face utterly expressionless. "What Rossi means, ma'am, is that if you rule against _us_ , we'll _both_ be going."

Strauss let out a long sigh. "Well, the unit obviously can't function two more men down. Very well, David. I agree to your proposal, for the moment. But you are to take no direct action against any potential UNSUB without my express prior approval. Is that clear?"

The glance Rossi shot Morgan was the non-verbal equivalent of a high five. "Yes, ma'am, it is. And now with your permission, I'd—we'd—like to get back to work."

**~ o ~**

Knowing about the phenomenon of Stockholm Syndrome—understanding how it works, why and how it develops—confers no automatic protection from falling under its spell.

In the relative sanity of his solitude, Aaron Hotchner thought that he'd discovered one of the keys to his own lapse into Stockholm: the moment when his identification with Warden as a man whose wife, like Aaron's, had walked out on him outweighed the fact that the man had abducted him. Had drugged and tortured him. Had kept him prisoner for—what was today? Saturday, May 29th?

His fifteenth day here. More than two weeks.

He had to avoid falling into that false trap of sympathy again.

He also needed to rethink his survival strategy, to start thinking long-term, to stop counting on the Team to get him out of here quickly.

Strauss would never allow them to stay on one case for more than two weeks. There were too many other problems, all across the country. They always hated to let go, to surrender the case back to the locals, but—once they'd made their contribution, there was nothing else the BAU could do. He'd taken them off more than one case himself, when it was clear that other agencies were better positioned to carry the ball.

But he had to let them know he was alive, especially now that he was on the trail of his captor's identity. He was now completely confident that Warden had played no part in any of the prosecutions Aaron himself had led, which meant that whatever had caught Warden's eye had been listed under his fifth case, _Daniels, Fortney, et al_.

And he knew and could reproduce exactly what he had written in that column:

_Dan/Fort Summer '94  
Hon Y Pawlicki  
lead Cyn Allgood  
Stan Fellowes  
Nolin Daniels  
Wallace Fortney  
Mumbles  
H Federman  
guy fr Barbados  
? Hewlett  
Melva Rae K ?_

So … either Warden was one of something like seventeen defendants in a nasty corruption trial that had started with arson and ended with murder-for-hire, or he had recognized the names of the judge or the two other attorneys he had listed.

Judge Yvonne Pawlicki had also presided over his first trial.

Cynthia Allgood had also served on prosecution teams with him in his second and fourth trials, and Stan Fellowes had done the same in his first and ninth trials (but most of the cast of characters in the ninth, _Kwon, Park, et al_ , had been Korean, so that was a probable non-starter).

So … Daniels, Fortney, in June of '94; or Jurek, Wilhousky, in December, '92; or Wassermann, Sinclair, March, '93; or Kelly, Sterman, November, '93.

Progress on other fronts, too: He was pretty sure he'd identified Warden among the kids in early photographs on the wall. Not often and never centered, the chubby and bespectacled boy appeared several times in groups, tending to position himself behind other children. The one time his face was completely visible, he seemed timid and unsure of himself. Many of the photos that included him had as their focus a confident, pretty girl who embraced attention. Even Diana backed off and ceded the spotlight to the little starlet.

Aaron now suspected that the pretty girl and Warden were fraternal twins, the two babies held by the pudgy woman in the rocking chair by a Christmas fireplace hung with stockings. They'd all grown up together, Warden and his sister and his bride-to-be. The profiler within him suggested a scenario in which the child he called Starlet was the preferred child and Warden the disappointment, who was later rescued by the effervescent Diana.

Working from there, he was now spending more time studying the adults he'd tentatively identified as Warden's parents and extended family.

The whine sounded, followed by the rattle.

A part of him, the legal warrior part, wanted to straighten his tie, smooth his hair, get his Kickass face on. His Aaron-fucking-Hotchner face.

Wrong face.

The clunk sounded, the door at the far end of the long room.

Footsteps sounded, sneakers this time. He wondered whether hard-soled shoes were for weekdays and sneakers were for weekends. Or whether sneakers were for off-hours. Could he find another way to check the passage of time by Warden's footwear?

"Are you awake?"

He bit back sarcasm. Today's battle was one that he absolutely, positively had to win. "I'm awake," he called back.

Warden slipped the latch and shot the window open.

Aaron stayed seated on the cot, hands in his lap. He got through the whole _You Warden, Me Prisoner_ thing without incident.

"And your statements?"

_Showtime._

Slowly, deliberately, with all the meaning and sincerity at his command, maintaining direct eye contact with the older man who peered at him through the window, he said, "Warden, I wish to acknowledge my part in your wrongful incarceration. I betrayed my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. I participated in a conspiracy to convict an innocent man. I'm ashamed of and sorry for my malfeasance. I beg permission to do what I can to make restitution for the wrongs I have done to you.

"I understand that the length and severity of my sentence are contingent upon my penitence and good behavior. I thank you for your continuing effort to make my time served as humane and dignified as is consistent with my offenses against you and the justice system."

Warden peered across the cell at him with puzzlement, no doubt wondering what had caused the change in his attitude. Suspicious, and with good reason.

Aaron crossed to the wall, turned, and thrust his hands out around the bar, volunteering them for his captor to cuff. As he did so, he put on the game face needed here, the Penitent's Face—head bowed, eyes lowered. "Please, Warden," he said quietly, "I have a request. It's worth both my questions if you'll just let me speak."

The older man fastened the handcuffs around his wrists slowly, emotionlessly, and then said, "You may speak briefly."

Hotchner drew a deep breath and prepared to crawl. "Warden, first, I want to thank you for the resources you left on your last visit—the box of tissues, the shaving mug and brush, and especially the book of poetry—you're obviously doing all you can to make my time served as tolerable as possible. I appreciate your kindness. I know I've disappointed you, and I want to do better. I'm committed to doing better. But I must respectfully request mail privileges."

"Oh, preposterous!" Warden backed off from the window, his voice rising with his agitation. "Did you not understand me, Prisoner, when I explained it to you? It's a simple trade-off. While you don't enjoy mail and telephone privileges, at the same time, you aren't living in constant terror of the violence and sexual abuse that absolutely _pervade_ the so-called official justice system."

"Yes sir," he said, and hastily altered it to, "Yes, Warden. But I've thought about your words since we last spoke and—I'd like to propose a compromise."

"Oh, you would, would you?"

He longed to look upward, to gauge more accurately his opponent's emotional state, but it just wasn't worth the risk. "Yes, Warden. I would."

When the man said nothing, he dared to continue. "It's principally my son," he said. "Jack has already lost his mother. I don't want him thinking that I'm dead, too. That I'm never coming back." He leaned his head against the wall that separated them, speaking softly, urgently, passionately, as though to a lover. "Warden, listen to me: I haven't begged for anything yet, but I'm begging now. If I weren't cuffed in a standing position, I'd get down on my knees. I'm serious, I'll do anything— _anything_ —for the opportunity to send just one letter. Just one. Write it yourself, write anything you want, but let me sign it and put my fingerprints on it. Please let me assure my friends and family that I'm alive."

"Your fingerprints," Warden repeated. "What use would your fingerprints be to your son?"

Aaron sighed. There was nowhere to go with that one but absolute honesty. "There's no way Jessica won't turn the letter over the the Bureau. Even if I wrote in big red letters, _Don't turn this over to the Team_ , she'd do it. They'll verify it was my fingerprints on the letter, and Jack will know that I'm alive, that I'm thinking of him. Certainly, the Bureau will know I'm alive, too, but—is that a critical problem for you? Is it supposed to be a secret?"

Warden walked away from the window, and for a moment, he thought the man would enter his cell, but instead he returned to Hotchner. "This is a cheap offer," he said dismissively. "You have the benefit of knowing that I'm trying to be honorable here, to do the right thing. You're probably sure that I won't decide to abuse you physically...in any way. This isn't maximum security."

He was right—Aaron was fairly sure now that Warden got no thrill from inflicting pain, and despite the way the man had cut his clothes off him, he was close to positive that his little captor didn't profile as a rapist.

"That's true," he conceded, "but it wasn't a factor in my offer. I also offered to do anything. Say anything." He drew a deep, miserable breath. "Confess to anything."

And he would. It would mean nothing—tendered, as it was, under duress—but it would hurt nevertheless.

**~ o ~**

Thursday's adventurous Sagittarius full moon still rode high in the sky that Saturday night, sending one glowing, silvery ray through the window of the room above the Hawthornes' stable, the one Norton Charpentier rented and stayed in whenever he was in the area.

Norton turned away from the light and back onto his right side for what must have been the fourth or fifth time in the past hour. Once again, he tried to rearrange his pillow into a more comfortable shape, but sleep was proving elusive. This afternoon's visit to Prisoner had been so frustrating: Two full weeks now the man had been in that underground bunker, fifteen days with virtually nothing to do but try to figure out who the hell had put him there, and it was obvious his captive still had no clue.

Sure, he was crawling now. Sure, he was pleading, promising the sun, the moon, the stars, for mail privileges. _Mail privileges!_ Putting on his act, reading his statements so sincerely, just dripping false penitence, strutting his stuff the way he no doubt did in the courtroom, all but batting his eyes at Norton, and—as always—his focus was all about himself, rather than his crimes. An air of obnoxious self-righteousness still clung to the lawyer despite everything.

One side of him, the outraged side, wanted to storm back down there and scream _How dare you not recognize Norton Waldo Charpentier, the man whose life you deliberately and totally destroyed?_ The other side, the cooler, more analytical side—fortunately, his dominant one—argued _No, Prisoner has to discover his guilt for himself, otherwise he'll always be, in his own mind, an innocent man, the aggrieved party._

But how to get him to do that? He'd considered giving Prisoner trial transcripts and case files along with the books on wrongful conviction he'd delivered earlier, but had decided against it for that very reason. For even though there'd been numerous co-defendants in his case, Norton had been the only one the young Aaron Hotchner had both intensively interviewed _and_ examined in court. So giving him transcripts now—well, he might as well wear one of those red-and-white stickers that read _HELLO! My Name Is Nortie Charpentier._

No, recognition—and ultimately, penitence—had to come from within Prisoner. Any other approach was simply unacceptable and would result in, at best, a hollow victory. Norton sighed, knowing it was his responsibility as Warden to lead him toward those goals.

Well, he was up for the challenge, but in order to do psychological battle with a man as skilled as his captive, he needed his rest. Fortunately, there were always the stars to help and guide him. Slowly, deliberately, combining yoga and meditation techniques with his knowledge of the heavens, he let his consciousness drift out to them, to bask in their warmth and power, to fill him with their wisdom. At last his breathing settled into a gentle, regular pattern, and gradually, in a process as delicate as the most fragile flower, he became one with them.

 _Looking down from the heavens, he saw himself riding Burley through the woods in the moonlight, heading towards the bunker. Then abruptly he was_ there _, feeling the jolt of hooves, the tang of the cool night air, the dampness of overhanging leaves as they passed by. Ah, there was nothing as beautiful as the forest at night, ghostly images all around, the twitters and sighs of life hidden in the shadows._

_He reached forward to pat Burley on the side of his neck and was stunned to find...nothing! Looking down, he realized with a shock that he and Burley were now one, a centaur with his head, chest, and arms, and the horse's body and legs. Long hair streamed down his back, forming a mane of sorts. He—they—were Sagittarius incarnate. Instead of being horrified by this, he was delighted. Set free._

_Moving slowly forward through the darkness, he spotted glowing objects in the distance: a lion, standing regally, eyes glowing fiercely; a golden crab, scuttling up a tree trunk; a shaggy ram, his horned head tossing impatiently; an immense bull, pawing at the earth._

_The Personifications, he thought. Who'd have imagined that they were so literal? He laughed aloud with delight. As he passed, each shimmered briefly, then turned into a common forest creature before slipping away into the night. But something up ahead still glowed; in fact, glowed more brightly the closer he came. At last he was able to make it out—no creature this time, but a fiery scale, two empty metal plates suspended by chains at either end of a long arm. Libra, he realized, the scales of Justice, and he was drawn to it as a moth to a flame. At last he stood before it, awed by its power, staring helplessly into the flames that surrounded it. But instead of consuming him, it caressed him, warmed him, soothed him. A joy enveloped him that he had never known before: he had been truly blessed._

He awakened to find himself man, not centaur. Still Nortie Charpentier, or at least the man who had once been Nortie. He sat up, scrubbed at his face.

The Scales of Justice.

 _Gahh, Justice, which inevitably led back to Prisoner and his pathetic whining pleas_.

 _I'll do anything_ , the lawyer had said. Which he supposed also meant he would permit anything. Submit to anything.

Too bad he wasn't Waldo. Waldo Charpentier would have removed his suit coat, loosened his tie, never taking his eyes off his disobedient son. His disappointment of a son. His miserable fat slug of a son who was already trembling in terror. Would have taken the extension cord out of the drawer, doubled it, knotted it, and snarled, S _trip!_

 _But he's dead. And I'm not Waldo_.


	15. Forms of Negotiation

 

As he rattled down that lousy elevator, he was probably as unhappy as he had ever been since he left prison. It was a bad idea, it was a stupid idea, it was an idea spawned in hell, but he had to give it just one shot. Prisoner was so quick with facile assurance— _oh, anything, anything_ —so blind to his essential dishonesty. So confident that if he just lowered his eyes and acted the part of a penitent he could get whatever he wanted.

He had to give Prisoner a chance to prove himself willing to learn rather than utterly faithless. He wanted to believe that no man was beyond hope, but—sometimes it was hard.

He strode to the window and opened it.

Prisoner was half-sitting up in bed, apparently awakened by the sound of the elevator. His hair poked up in all directions and his eyes struggled to focus. Even as Norton looked at him, he ran a hand through his hair, checked his jaw for stubble, and swung his feet (in their two pairs of sweat socks) to the floor. Checked his nails. Glanced around at his housekeeping, which was as blameless as usual.

_He may be faithless, but he learns fast._

"Warden," he croaked, and cleared his throat. "I'm sorry—I didn't expect you back so soon."

He knew that something was up. Norton could read it in his nervous energy, in the expression of concern, of anticipation—maybe apprehension—on his pallid features.

"Shut up, take off your sweater, and get over here," Norton commanded.

The lawyer wasted no time with questions, but removed the garment and hung it over the back of the chair he was using as a bedside table, then stood up and approached the window.

"Hands."

Prisoner thrust his arms out on each side of the bar, and Norton cuffed them securely. The lawyer's face was stony, stoic, but his breathing was ragged. A febrile fear, a " _My God, what did I do?"_ panic shone in his eyes.

Norton moved over to the door.

One lock. Two locks. Three.

The man in the raspberry cotton uniform stood with his forehead resting against the wall. Norton could tell from faint ripples in his forearms that he was clenching and unclenching his hands.

Norton took the extension cord from his pocket. "This may interest you," he said.

The prisoner glanced back over his shoulder and watched in silence as Norton folded the cord in half, then tied a knot in the doubled end of it. Was there fear in the set of those shoulders?

"The good news," Norton said, "Is that I have reconsidered your proposal for a compromise."

Now _that_ clearly engaged the prisoner's attention.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I think so," the lawyer answered. He continued to look back, not at Norton, but at the cord.

Norton let the cord dangle from his right hand. "So you know what this is for."

A breath. "I think so."

"So—what do you have to say to me now?"

The lawyer stood straighter, shoulders squared. "OK," he said quietly.

_That's it? Just "OK"?_

He visibly braced himself for the first blow. When it landed, he made a faint sound. It was the same with the second: He neither cried out nor protested. He just stood there.

Charpentier felt oddly embarrassed that he was hurting the lawyer so little. The man should have screamed by now, he reasoned—screamed the way he would have screamed, should have crashed to his knees sobbing for mercy.

He tried to hit harder, lashing out at the lawyer's back and buttocks a third and fourth time, but some kind of _I-am-not-Waldo_ sense made a mockery of his efforts. He considered and regretfully discarded the notion of making him strip, which might increase the pain but would increase the effort and sheer bother that Norton had to exert even more.

Damn it, he was supposed to have caved in, said, _Stop, stop_.

Because _he_ , Norton, wanted to stop.

"Permission to speak, Warden?"

Norton looked up, startled. The lawyer leaned against the wall, panting slightly.

"Granted," he said without enthusiasm. He should have disciplined the man for his audacity, but he was distracted by the contrast between his fantasy and reality.

_Damn, but it was frustrating that there was so little satisfaction to be derived from justice._

"You didn't deserve it," the lawyer said, his breath still labored. "It wasn't your fault that you weren't the kind of son he'd imagined you'd be."

Norton tightened his grip on the knotted cord. "What in the hell do you think you're talking about, Prisoner?"

"Was it because you weren't as interested in sports as he wanted you to be? Or because you weren't much of a salesman, much of a people pleaser?"

Charpentier froze, staring numbly at the man leaning against the metal cell wall.

"You're speaking out of turn, Prisoner." He reached automatically for the Enforcer.

"Yes, sir." His captive turned slightly, but he didn't stop talking. "He didn't appreciate your intelligence, your quick grasp of any subject matter you came across. Like the kids at school, he saw your intelligence as freaky and unnatural, something to be embarrassed about. He had a certain picture of what his son would be like, and he lashed out at you whenever you disappointed his expectations."

"My father was a good man," Norton countered, even as a part of him wondered why in hell he was defending the old bully. "He was sober and hard-working and faithful—"

"—and he preferred your sister," Prisoner said, his tone growing steadier by the second. "Even good men can be misled. He may have been a good man—and if you say he was, I believe you—but he made a couple of huge mistakes with you, and it wasn't fair."

Charpentier couldn't puzzle out what was going on. He had taken the knots dozens of times, maybe scores, and each time the individual stabs of agony had burned for hours, leaving him weeping in the privacy of his room. And yet here was this skinny wimp of an attorney, talking about Norton's father as if he had known him, serenely conceding that he was talking out of turn and that, logically, realistically, he was earning a chat with the Enforcer.

"So you _do_ know who I am," he said, his grip tightening on the cord.

"No, sir," the lawyer confessed with a sigh, "but I'm getting there."

"How long do I have to keep this up?"

Prisoner's response was grim, and he didn't bother to try turning around to look at Norton. "As long as it takes to win mail privileges," he said.

Charpentier quietly gathered up the cord, wound it tight, and stuck it in his pants pocket.

"One letter," he said, wondering how he could hold all the power and still lose.

**~ o ~**

To the best of his knowledge, it was Wednesday, June 2nd, his nineteenth day in captivity. He was wrapped, toga-like, in a sheet, and wearing his sweater. Aaron Hotchner was every damn bit as organized and analytical as his tormentor, and God certainly knew he had all the time in the world to plan strategies.

The little square door slid open.

Remembering Warden's grudging promise of a letter, he started to rise to his feet, checking his makeshift toga to ensure that it would stay up.

"Sit," Warden said.

Hotchner sat back down quietly on the cot, waiting for Warden to specify which way he was to face when he was shackled.

Instead, Warden peered in. He looked at Aaron, at Aaron's scrubs still dripping on the line, and back again at Aaron.

"Put your hands together on your head," he commanded.

_That's a new one._

Obediently, Aaron laced his fingers together in his hair. An ugly rectangular container more slime green than lime green, and of a slippery, soft plastic, hit the floor and bounced once.

"Stay," Warden ordered.

_Sit. Stay. Like I have a bunch of places to go…._

_Maybe on the outside, he's a dog trainer._

"Inside the box, you will find a sheet of paper with printing on it, a stamped envelope, and a red ink pad. You are to sign the letter, mark it with the thumb and forefinger of your right hand, _over_ the text, address the envelope to the person of your choosing, and put everything back in the box."

Aaron waited, unsure whether to reach for the box or to wait for an explicit command.

"You will use your own home address as the return address," Warden continued. "You may collect the letter now."

_Oh, you mean "fetch"?_

A small part of him wanted to bark, but the rest of him wanted very much to communicate with the outside world, so he held his tongue. He got up, bent to pick up the small box, and returned to his cot without comment.

The printed sheet was folded in thirds, the better to fit into the business envelope that was included beside it. Aaron opened it and read the text and his heart sank. The words Warden had written were accurate enough as far as they went, but they certainly viewed the whole business from his own point of view, which was to say that Aaron richly deserved his incarceration and Warden was being good to him.

_But it's a start. Suck it up and let this one pass, and maybe if there's a next time, he'll give me a little more leeway._

He wondered whether he would have to submit to a beating every time he sent a letter out. Not that he viewed that as a barrier; he was far tougher than he looked. He was pretty sure that the one he'd experienced had taken more out of Warden than it had out of him. Warden had a fantasy that he was the Good Guy, fairly and impartially dealing out retribution. Confronting his Inner Monster must have been a bit of a trauma for him.

Of course, even a beating was contact, and contact always yielded information, the better to fine-tune the profile and to help Aaron work out an escape plan. He strongly suspected that Warden didn't care to repeat that performance.

"Write some generic closing," Warden instructed, "and sign your name. Put everything back in the case without sealing the envelope."

Hotchner thought about that. "Permission to speak, Warden?"

"Only insofar as it it relates directly to your task at hand."

"My closing would relate to the recipient," Aaron said carefully. "Who will get this letter?"

"To whom would you prefer to send it?"

 _To whom_.

But that was a good question. "May I think about that for a moment?"

"Of course."

Hotchner focused all his analytical skills on that problem. Not Jack, not Jessica, although Jack was the person he most wanted to reach. They would rip it open, devour the contents, and in the process they wuld destroy any trace evidence that Warden left. OK, so…Rossi? Morgan? A small but vocal part of him wanted the recipient to be someone who cared, someone who thought with the heart first.

"OK," he said finally, and scrawled, _All my best, Aaron Hotchner_ , on the bottom of the letter. "Do you want me to address the envelope?"

"Yes. And as I said, your own address as the return."

As he wrote the street number and name on the envelope, he wondered what the recipient would think, seeing Hotch's handwriting, Hotch's return address.

When he was done, he picked up the letter again. "May I add a small postscript for my son?"

There was a silence, then, "You may, but I will examine it, and if I decide that it contains anything inappropriate I will destroy the letter in its entirety and I will never let you know whether I sent it or not."

"I understand," Aaron said in his meekest voice. Carefully, in the block print that his son had just been mastering when they were parted, he wrote, "I love you and I miss you, Jack. I think of you all day and all night. You are my sunshine."

He had to stop there, because tears were beginning to stream down his cheeks and landing on the letter in fat wet plops. He wiped his eyes with his hand, then the edge of the sheet, mutttering an apology to Warden as he did so. Then he said "Thumb and forefinger?"

"Right hand," Warden confirmed.

Aaron opened the small red-ink stamp pad and pressed the required fingertips to its surface, then again on the paper, crossing the text so the BAU would know he had read what was printed there.

He stuffed everything back into the little plastic box and collapsed in on himself, sobbing helplessly. Warden appeared to understand what he was going through, because he waited until Hotchner again had control over himself before he directed him to drop the box through the window.

Aaron stood up and wobbled over to the window. Warden was several feet away from the window, his hands in the pockets of his khakis, frowning and watching his prisoner. Aaron let the box fall directly down below the window.

"Return to your bed and put your hands on your head," Warden instructed. When Aaron did so, his captor collected the box. He flashed a strange, grim smile at Hotchner through the window. "You see," he said, "I can be humane when you demonstrate the proper attitude."

 _You're a complete monster_ , Aaron thought, _and someday I will rip your heart out_ , but he bowed his head and murmured, "Thank you, Warden."

_**~ o ~** _

On Monday night, June 7th, she headed straight home, too tired to think, let alone to stop for a drink or a coffee with friends. When she got home she found nothing but _Marie Cla_ _i_ _re_ and her Visa bill in her mailbox.

No, wait: a legal-sized envelope, hand-addressed to Ms. Penelope Garcia in a familiar angular, southpaw scrawl. Standard Liberty Bell "Forever" stamp.

She sat down, hard, hyperventilating. The envelope sat in her lap, plain white against pink paisley linen.

After a few seconds her unsteady fingers rummaged in her bag for her phone.

"Morgan," she said, feeling way beyond any temptation to flirt. "Did you get anything—interesting in your mail today?"

"What, Baby Girl? You mean at the office?"

"No. At home."

"Don't know. I haven't been there. Why, gorgeous? What's up?"

"Derek, I have a letter here addressed to me in Hotch's handwriting, with Hotch's return address. I—I don't know if I should even be touching it, maybe there's evidence on it."

"Garcia, are you sure?"

"Um, I don't know. As sure as I can be. This is his handwriting or it's a really, really good forgery. I've been deciphering his handwriting for eight years."

"Where's it sent from?"

"Zip code, hang on, it's all smeared—ZIP 10007, that's midtown Manhattan."

There was a long silence, then Morgan said, "Open it."

"What? What about evidence?"

"Open it," Morgan repeated. "That's the first and most critical thing."

She slipped a feathery pen into the edge of the flap and pulled. She wondered whether the envelope self-sealed, or whether somebody's—Hotchner's?—saliva was under the flap.

"Single piece of plain multipurpose paper," she said. "Folded in threes." She gasped. "Oh, my God, Derek! Blood! No, wait—I think it's stamp pad ink—red stamp pad ink, two fingerprints, nice and clear in red ink. Printed—laser-printer, I think. Aaron's signature. Derek, this is Aaron's signature, I'm sure of it.

"OK, it's just one paragraph, it says, 'I am writing to you so you can pass the word to those concerned that I am alive and in good condition. I am serving a term in a private prison for crimes and injustices that I committed. I am being treated humanely. The length and severity of my punishment are contingent on my penitence and good behavior. Please let my family, my friends, and my colleagues know they are always in my thoughts. Assure them that I will eventually be released. All my best, Aaron Hotchner.' And there's a printed PS to Jack, you want to hear that, too?"

"Of course, Baby Girl."

She read the block print to him, her voice close to breaking.

"It doesn't sound like him at all, Derek, except for the PS and the closing. Those words are handwritten, and that was a standard closing when he wrote letters."

"It's possible the closing and PS are the only part he composed," Morgan told her. "'… contingent on my penitence and good behavior'? That doesn't sound anything like Hotch."

"It doesn't. It sounds … creepy."

"OK, I'm coming over and I'm bringing a couple techs," Morgan said. "No, scratch that. I'm bringing the whole freaking team."

"And wait, wait, there's a little printed card here, instructions on how to reply to him! Morgan, there's a way to get a message to him!"

"I'm coming right over," Morgan repeated, and closed the connection.

Garcia sat very still, afraid to touch the paper and destroy evidence, but aching to make some connection with their missing unit chief. She fanned her fingers just above the print, not quite touching it, and willed herself to sense Aaron Hotchner's presence.


	16. Revelations

 

_A letter. A real, honest-to-God letter from Aaron Hotchner!_

They gathered there excitedly, all of them: Morgan, grim and composed, three weeks into being Acting Team Leader and still not comfortable in the role; Reid uncharacteristically sweaty from the gym; JJ wilted from her long day at the office, with _I-miss-Henry_ in her tired blue eyes; Rossi in jeans, sleepy but hard-eyed, smelling suspiciously of scotch; Prentiss unexpectedly damp and silent in a sarong from where she'd been relaxing poolside with a friend.

Then there were the techies from trace, Vaughn and Linda, solemn and suspicious, their big black leather cases of investigative instruments by their sides, gloves at the ready in their hands. They kept glancing around Garcia's cluttered, colorful living room as though it were a seething mass of potential crime scene contamination—which it was, sort of.

Finally, there was Kevin dancing around awkwardly at the periphery, FBI but not BAU, part of them but not truly one of them, belonging and not-belonging. When he finally settled down, perching on an antique buffet near the front door, he folded his arms across his chest and stared glumly at Penelope and the team.

Garcia surrendered the original letter, the envelope, and the small white card that had been included with it to the techies and passed photocopies of the letter around to the rest of the team.

Jennifer Jareau read the words silently several times, then shook her head and said, "'Crimes and injustices that I committed'? Hotch's on the very short list of people that I just can't imagine committing a crime or an injustice. He's Mr. Straight-Up."

"Nobody's perfect," Kevin said.

"Hotch is pretty close to it," JJ replied, with some heat in her voice.

"Nah, he's got his flaws, just like all of us," Rossi said. "He's no Saint Aaron. He's made his share of mistakes, and back when I first knew him, well—he could be a bit of a dickhead. No, really," he said as a murmur of protest arose. "His dad was a Class-A jerk, and Aaron had more than a little of that 'it ain't wrong if I didn't get caught' about him back in the day. But it was little stuff."

"At least we can stop wondering whether he's alive," Emily breathed, wonder still foremost in her voice. She studied the text for a few seconds and squinted. "Oh, God," she said. "This blurred little blob here, on the second line? Is that a tear?"

"Likely," Vaughn, the junior techie, said. He was at Garcia's kitchen table, bent over the original document with a magnifier while Linda, his superior, bustled around the table adjusting the poles that supported their light sources. "We'll know better when we get samples."

"Interesting verb choices," Spencer Reid said, penciling little marks on his copy. "'I am writing. I am being held…' Hotch doesn't use progressives when he writes. He's all bureaucratic masculine preterits and present tenses. 'I wrote. I am a prisoner.' That's what Hotch would say, and that's the way he'd say it. The printed part of this, the UNSUB or UNSUBs composed it. That would also explain the editorializing justifications about crimes he committed and how humanely he's being treated and the references to his penitence."

"That's Hotch," JJ said, blinking back tears. "I'd know that handwriting anywhere. Even the printing. And, oh, God, the 'You are my sunshine' thing…Haley used to sing that to Jack when he was a baby. Used to just rip Hotch apart when Jack asked him to sing it after she…after Haley, you know. I'm sorry, I just can't be analytical right now." She blindly reached for a tissue. "Sorry," she repeated, sniffling.

"Preliminary report?" Linda said, entering the living area. "Conclusively the prints of Aaron Hotchner, not only the ones in red ink, but several more prints on the front and the back of the page. A cursory examination suggests that the handwriting is also his, but I'd prefer to hold my conclusion until a forensic graphologist has seen it. Terry, I think, or maybe Susan would be good with this."

"Thank you," Morgan told her, and his voice was so businesslike, so much like Hotch's, that Garcia choked back a gasp. He turned his attention then to the message that sat on his lap. "There's no indication of numbers here, or even a simple singular-or-plural." He glanced at Reid. "That tends to indicate a single UNSUB," he continued, "which fits with what we have of Truck Man back in May, one man operating alone." He looked at the entire team. "If this is a single man successfully holding and hiding somebody as smart and resourceful as Hotch, he's damned intelligent and he's crazy organized."

"At least we have a motive now," Rossi added. "Personal grievance. He thinks Aaron screwed him over and he's all about exacting punishment."

"We know more than that," Garcia said, pleased at last to have something to add to the group analysis. "He sent that card, it's on the second page, with instructions for replying. We write up our answer to his letter and we post it to this Web site, it's…it's used by people like, oh, prison reformers, Amnesty International folks, people like that, to get messages to political prisoners. It gets a zillion hits every day from all over the world, mostly from organizations and universities. The downside is that it's gonna be almost impossible to pick out the URL where the UNSUB reads it from all the others, especially if he's already, like, at a university or active in one of those organizations."

"One of my possibles is on the faculty of a university—well, a little liberal arts college," Rossi said.

"'Possibles'?" Prentiss echoed, perking up.

"Yeah, a national run on facial recognition software—and it took two weeks to complete it—came up with thirteen white guys whose features are pretty much identical to Furface's."

"It'd be nice if the stupid program ran as fast as it does on crime shows," Garcia said sourly. "And if it always gave you just one person, one perfect person. But real life, people, is a bitch. How many of the thirteen have you and Stewie managed to eliminate, my friend?"

"Stewie?" JJ said.

"He's new in Human Trafficking and he's crazy-good, plus his love life is a shambles," Garcia replied, "so he doesn't have a problem hanging around the Bureau, doing extra stuff. He was perfect for someone to help Rossi on this."

Morgan stared. "Why hadn't I heard about this?"

"Nothing to report yet," Dave answered calmly. "We only just started pulling together this stuff and comparing it to the profile. Some of 'em are obviously wrong—way too young, too old, too fat, too skinny—one of 'em is in a wheelchair. Six bear a strong enough resemblance to our UNSUB that they warrant a closer look. Nobody's an exact match. It's possible—though unlikely—that our guy doesn't have a current driver's license or a state ID. I promise I'll have a detailed report in a day or so. Reid, I'll want to sit down with you and your famous maps for a while. Can I meet with you tomorrow for a couple hours?"

"Sure," Spencer said with an eager nod.

Rossi looked at his fellow agents. "But this thing, this gives me a lot more to work with now, to add to the profile. Personal grievance, private prison—I don't like the sound of that at all—computer savvy—"

"Not that much," Garcia interrupted. "It doesn't take much techie skill at all to bookmark that Web site, to upload a message—you just register and click a button. Takes even less to read the messages that are already there. Anybody can scroll through them; no registration necessary. We're talking thousands of new posts a day in more languages than I can identify."

Reid studied her. "Have you spent time on this site?"

"No, silly genius. I checked it out while you-all were on your way over here. I figured that was the least I could do." She reached for another sheaf of papers. "Here's what I have on the owners and administrators of the domain. It's administered out of Switzerland, but the owners are two Brits and a Belgian, big-time, _huge_ names in the human rights movement."

"So it's completely on the up-and-up," Morgan said with a sigh.

"Oh, totally," Garcia assured him. "And as long as we're the ones who register and upload, and all he does is scan the postings for a message with his ID number, a snowball in hell has nothing on the slim chance we have of identifying him from that."

"On the bright side," JJ added, "he's the one who's buying stamps and handling letters and mailing them. He can't _always_ avoid leaving trace. He'll make mistakes."

"I'm concerned about the implications of the text," said Reid.

Garcia looked down again at the words she had already grown to hate as much as she loved the hope that receiving them had given her.

_I am writing to you so you can pass the word to those concerned that I am alive and in good condition. I am serving a term in a private prison for crimes and injustices that I committed. I am being treated humanely. The length and severity of my punishment are contingent on my penitence and good behavior. Please let my family, my friends, and my colleagues know they are always in my thoughts. Assure them that I will eventually be released._

"'Private prison,'" Reid read. "'Serving a term.' There's a grandiosity here. This UNSUB, it's not that he thinks he's _above_ the law; in his mind, he _is_ the law."

"There's some indication of humanizing, though," JJ pointed out. "Just acknowledging that Hotch has family, friends, colleagues who care about him—that's a step up from objectifying. I mean, I know it isn't much, but I'll take my reassurances where I can find them."

"But the 'eventually released' thing is pure bullshit," Morgan added. "He goes to the trouble to abduct Hotch and put him in a private jail, there's no way that at some magical end of his so-called sentence, he's gonna just unlock the door like a real prison and say, 'Go, you're free; here's a suit and ten bucks and a bus ticket. Keep your nose clean.'" His features darkened. "Hotch has seen him and he knows where he is. There's no way this guy's ever gonna let him walk out of there alive."

**~ o ~**

On Tuesday evening, June 8th, the man who had once been known as Norton Charpentier eyed himself critically in the mirror of a hotel room in Boston and adjusted the knot in his tie.

 _Not bad_ , he decided, adjusting the lay of his suit jacket on his shoulders. The hardest part of his transformation from grotesquely fat ex-con into the person he was now had been getting accustomed to looking at his reflection. He had spent the first thirty-nine years of his life avoiding mirrors, retreating into the background of photographs, hiding behind other, more attractive people.

There was a gentle tap at his door. He knew it was Joanne, recognized her tentative tap, but he peered through the security eye and confirmed her identity before he opened the door.

"Yoo hoo, it's me," she caroled. She had changed into one of those little black dresses she seemed to have by the dozens. Her arms, remarkably slender and toned for her age, were raised in the act of fastening the clasp of her necklace at the back of her neck. A champagne blonde by choice, she valued expressiveness in her face and had only recently reluctantly submitted to what she called _a wee bit o' the Botox_.

He smiled. "Come on in. What's up, Miz Jo?"

"Could you do up my hook?" She turned and presented her back to him.

"Oh, I think I probably could," he said, not moving.

"God, you're such a picky-ass!" she said with a giggle. " _Will_ you, then? _Will_ you do the little hook thing at the top? And would it kill you to close the door?"

He reached past her and shut the door, then turned and wrestled the little hook at the top of her zipper into its resting place. "There you go," he told her. "All properly fastened up."

"Do you think I'll need my wrap?" She indicated the folded emerald green satin in her free hand. "I don't want to take it unless I'll need it."

"The weather thing on Google said it would drop to sixty before midnight," he replied. "Other than that, it's up to you."

Sighing her annoyance, she tucked the wrap under her arm, beside her jeweled clutch purse. "Ready?" she said with a grin.

He offered her his arm and a matching grin. "Always," he said.

Two minutes later they emerged from the elevator into the ornate lobby, where two other couples immediately approached them, greeting Joanne effusively.

"Wonderful to see you, too," she said, "and this is Joe, you've heard me talking about Joe, I'm sure."

The males thrust hands toward him for shaking. The females looked him over stem to stern, then looked at Joanne, working out the calculus of the relationship for themselves with hard analytical eyes.

He wondered idly what Prisoner would think of him if he could see him here—wondered what it would do for him and his sacred _profiles_ —seeing him with her, on his way to an early dinner and a glittering benefit performance of _Khovanshchina_.

**~ o ~**

On what was probably the night of June 9th, a Wednesday and the twenty-sixth day of his captivity, he was reviewing his finished current assignment—a ten-thousand-word essay on prosecutorial misconduct, complicated by the fact that Aaron had no damn idea where his captor wanted him to go on the subject—when he heard the usual sounds that heralded Warden's arrival. He glanced around his cell, brushed the front of his scrubs, and ran an exploratory hand over his jawline.

_So far, so good._

"Are you awake?" Warden called.

He set aside both his notes and the completed essay. "I am," he called back, vigorously massaging his left hand, his fingers, his wrist. Writer's cramp seemed to be an ongoing condition of his life lately.

The door behind the red rod slid open, but instead of the usual _Me, Warden, you Prisoner_ , crap, his captor said, "Get your laundry line."

Somewhat confused by the command, Hotchner rose from his cot and collected the loops of nylon cord from the shelf above the sink.

_Could have been worse; I could have had laundry hanging on it._

"Place your chair correctly."

That was a new one, but he figured out quickly that Warden meant to fit the chair legs into the holes in the floor. This oriented him with his cot and the toilet to his left, the door and the window with the rod to his right, and the sink and the larger of the two photo collages directly in front of him.

"Sit down."

He'd seen _that_ one coming a mile away.

"Using one end of the laundry line, tie your left ankle to the left side of the chair. Make sure that it is high enough that your foot cannot touch the floor."

Mmm. That didn't bode well.

_Question it, or ride it out and see what happens? Hurry up, Slick, make your decision. Time is running out …_

He did as he'd been told. When Warden told him to fasten his right ankle to the other side of the chair, he complied slowly and deliberately, trying to buy a little time to anticipate what his captor had in mind.

He could think of a dozen things, and none of them was pleasant.

"Permission to speak, Warden?"

"No."

_Yeah, definitely not in pleasant territory here._

Warden's arm reached through the opening, dangling the handcuffs. "Here," he said. "Take these and put them on."

Feeling a chill of dread, he took the cuffs and asked, "In front, or behind?"

"Front is fine." Warden's voice didn't have that heavy feel to it that he got when he was about to climb all over him for some real or imagined failing. It just sounded…ordinary.

He closed the bracelets around his wrists, let them fall to his lap, and sat still.

Three locks opened.

_This is new._

He sensed Warden behind him, then a heavy strip of foam and canvas encircled his upper body, securing it to the back of the chair with a crackle of Velcro.

His face showed nothing, but internally he cringed, wondering what new indignity his captor intended to inflict on him. He could feel perspiration breaking out along his sides and across his brow; he fought to keep from doubling his hands into fists.

Something warm was draped like a bib across his chest and over his shoulders—a baby's receiving blanket, he realized with profound shock—soft and ticklish, in pastel tones. Teddy bears, he noted. Green teddy bears, yellow stars, blue striped puppies and pink plaid kittens.

"Keep your head up and hold still," Warden directed.

"Permission to—"

"No. Just hold still. Don't be such a baby."

Something touched the right side of his head and he tensed in anticipation…then relaxed as he recognized the feel of a comb. Warden was combing his hair.

_OK, that's…beyond weird._

A snip.

_Good God. A haircut? A fucking haircut?_

"When I was in prison," Warden said, his voice conversational, "they trained me as a barber. So strange, I thought at the time. I have a Master's, after all. I suppose I just presumed that they would put me to work in the library, or somewhere I could use my education. (Keep your head up, please.) But, no. The first voc-rehab slot available was in barbering, and so a barber I would become. Who could have imagined that it would be useful seventeen years later? Just goes to show you, I guess."

And after days of almost nothing, the verbal and nonverbal cues Hotchner needed to flesh out his profile began tumbling from the sky like so many snowflakes as Warden snipped away.

Master's degree. Proud of his education. Odd phraseology: _and_ _so a barber I would become_.

And he said please. _Keep your head up, please_. Surely just habit, not meant as a signal that the dynamics of their relationship had altered in any way. A sense of humor, or at least irony. Prison sentence either began or ended about seventeen years ago.

That would be 1993. Aaron had been with the DoJ back then; he didn't move to the Bureau until '98. _OK, definitely one of the first three cases._

An infant's blanket, old and worn.

Don't attach too much significance to that, he reminded himself; it might just be that it's the right size.

That's true, he argued back with himself, but there are also photos on the walls of Warden's wife and their infant daughter. Don't outright presume _no_ significance.

"Look down, please," Warden said at last, gently nudging the back of his head.

Again with the _please_.

A cordless razor hummed and cleared stray hairs from the back of Hotchner's neck.

"I think that'll do," Warden said. He whisked the blanket off Aaron's shoulders with a flourish. "You'll want to clean up the floor around this, of course."

His captor walked around the chair. "Give me your hands," he said.

No please to it _this_ time.

Hotchner raised his cuffed hands as far as the Velcro band would permit.

Warden looped a piece of bright blue nylon rope around his hands, tying them in a large, loose double knot on the top, where Hotch could easily see it. Then he unlocked the cuffs and tucked them into the back pocket of his slacks.

_Oh. That's what's going on._

He really had to hand it to Warden in some ways; the little creep had clearly spent a lot of time thinking through his strategies.

The Velcro was released and the band disappeared.

"Don't forget to clean up," Warden said. "I'll be back to check your assignment and deliver your fresh supplies in an hour or so."

Locks clicked and he was gone.

Aaron raised his bound hands and sank his teeth into the double knot.

_Just when I started to think I had him figured out…_

_**~ o ~** _

He was pretty sure that it was the morning of Thursday, June 10th—his 27th day in this metal box—when things came together for him.

It was his second case, _Wassermann, Sinclair, et al._ —Warden had been the fat, sweaty dude who would have been a small fish in the prosecution of a huge child prostitution and kiddie porn ring if it hadn't been for his attitude, his sense of superiority and entitlement. He had a sister, too, married to one of the principals, either Wassermann or Sinclair. He thought it was probably Whatsisname Sinclair. Jerry. No, _Gerald_ Sinclair, the toad whose auto parts racket served as the front for the operation.

Warden was the brother-in-law, the accountant for Sinclair's auto parts business. Guy's name was…Carpenter? No, Charpentier, right. He recalled how the self-righteous little blob freaked out when Aaron pronounced it "Charpenteer"; no, it was "Shar-pen-tee-ay." Or "Shar-pent-yay." Something like that. He really got his panties in a wad when Aaron said it wrong, so, of course, he'd gone out of his way to get it wrong every time because it kept the defendant off-balance, more likely to screw up and get his story wrong. Plus, it was fun to watch him freak out, Hotch recalled.

Norman. No, Norbert. Norville? Should have been _Narwhal_ , given the size of him.

 _Christ, this is because I mispronounced his fucking_ name _?_


	17. Meltdown

 

Aaron was sitting cross-legged on the cot, eating an orange, when suddenly the reality of his cooperation with—his _submission to_ —a self-righteous little puke of a child molester began to eat away at his soul. With all his strength, he flung the orange across the room. It spattered most satisfactorily against the wall, sliding down to the floor as a mass of juice and pulp and seeds.

He thought about cleaning it up, but why? Warden—no, _Norton_. Once he'd finally recovered that elusive first name, Hotch had burned it into his memory by thinking _Norton Hears a Who_ —Norton had been there just the day before, playing barber and criticizing some of Aaron's citations in his essay. He was unlikely to show up again any time soon.

Aaron leaned over and pulled the food box from beneath his cot. He collected the remaining two oranges, both apples, and (after some consideration) both tomatoes from the shoebox where Warden—where _Norton, Nortie the Child Molester_ —always packed his fresh fruit and vegetables. Setting them in his lap, he shoved the sleeves of his sweater up his arms and took aim.

The oranges caromed off the wall unharmed, but the apples must have been a tad riper. They burst against the metal and slid to the floor dripping seeds and pectin. The tomatoes burst like fat red water balloons, like organic fireworks, and some of their blowback even reached the foot of his cot, but even their destruction couldn't reduce his rage.

He stood up, recovered the oranges, and pitched them repeatedly until they, too, splattered the wall and dripped juice and pulp down between the Plexiglas and the wall, soaking into the photographs of Warden's—of Nortie's—family.

Panting, shaking in his fury, he threw the chair against the wall once, twice, three times. On the fourth contact with the metal wall, it shattered into three sections of varnished wood and exposed pegs.

He recovered the pieces and backed up against the opposite wall. Holding each piece high over his head, he threw it with all his strength, so hard the effort made his muscles ache, at the far wall. He was panting and weeping and cursing incoherently by then, and he was no longer positive what most enraged him: Norton's cruelty and hubris; his father's voice inside him, still snarling _Loser! Whining little loser! Rules are for entry-level people, for the masses! What's wrong with you? Why can't you pay attention? What's the matter with you?_ —hitting his son with whatever happened to be close at hand; or himself, for thinking that he could protect himself, win back the right to his life, by sucking up to Porky the Child Molester and his miserable fucking rules.

The ceramic shaving mug was next to go, littering the floor with tiny shards, and when there was nothing left, he threw himself against the wall, battering it with his fists and his feet and his forehead until he managed either to exhaust himself or to knock himself out, he would never be sure which.

He regained a sense of himself some time later, crumpled against the wall amid the splinters and shards and the fruit pulp. Bruises already throbbed on his head and hands. Blood dried and pulled at the skin on his forehead and mouth. Tiny pieces of shaving mug had drilled into his feet, his shins, his knees.

He looked around himself through eyes beginning to swell shut. _He's going to kill me when he sees this mess_ , he thought, then drew a deep, shivery breath.

_So fucking what? I'm not making it out of here alive anyway. Better sooner than later._

**~ o ~**

They gathered on Friday afternoon, June 11, 2010—four weeks almost to the minute since Aaron Hotchner's disappearance—around the table in the conference room. David Rossi was in charge of the presentation, and he was involved in last-minute instruction by Garcia in the proper use of the remote.

Morgan wondered what the problem was, since it operated exactly like a television remote.

Ah, well—it's _Rossi_.

"OK," the senior profiler said finally, climbing to his feet. "Furface, aka Truck Guy, is five feet, eight inches, and probably weighs around one-sixty, one-seventy. We've estimated his age as 35 to 45, but he could be as young as 30 or as old as 50, so we included everything from 20 to 65. We included possibles listed from five-six to five-ten, allowing for Furface lying about his height or wearing lifts.

"So far, we haven't been able to find any connections between Aaron or any of his cases and these thirteen guys. There's a limit on our searches because we don't have warrants for some areas of inquiry at the moment, but as soon as we've narrowed the field to the point that we can establish probable cause, we'll turn Garcia loose on that along with Durbin," he said, referring to the other lawyer in the BAU. "Larry's not quite as creative as Aaron was— _is_ —at probable cause, but he's getting better.

"We've profiled our UNSUB as a loner, either single or divorced, intelligent, possibly well educated, but more likely self-taught, and working at a menial job. We've tried to verify where each of these guys was from 4 to 5 PM, EDT, on May 14th. We've narrowed it to maybe four now, but I'm gonna show you all thirteen, in case any of you sees something that triggers something."

He pressed a key on the remote and a vaguely familiar face appeared on the screen. "This is Number One. He's 26, lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He's too young and too muscular, a serious bodybuilder. Owns a sedan, not a truck. He's only on the list now because he mostly fits the profile, he's just a four-hour drive from here, and we can't verify where he was in the critical time-frame."

"I think I've seen him somewhere," Emily said tentatively.

Rossi gave a short laugh. "They're all gonna look familiar, 'cause they all look kind of like our Furface."

"What does he do for a living?" Morgan asked.

Rossi didn't even have to consult any notes. "Works the drive-through at McDonald's and has quite a recreational drug habit."

He clicked the remote and everyone inhaled sharply. "Yeah, this is Number Two. He's 44, lives in Bradenton, Florida, a pretty remarkable match to the face, which is the only reason why he's still on the list. He doesn't fit the profile, he lives in Florida, and he's been in a wheelchair all his life—but we don't know where he was in the critical time-frame, either, so—still on the list.

"Get used to everyone looking more or less like our UNSUB," he counseled.

"Here's Number Three—I feel like a game show host. Number Three is 38, lives in Marietta, Georgia, upper limits of height, and we've verified where he was in the critical time-frame. He's still on the list because he's a violent stalker with two convictions for domestic violence and he drives a truck, although it's a Chevy. Plus, I just don't like him.

"Number Four—" he clicked the remote "—is 44, a resident of Torrance, California, with, as you can see, a very strong resemblance to Furface and the right size, too. We can't verify where he was in the critical time-frame, although if he left California, he got back there pretty fast. He isn't much of a match to the profile, but you can't escape the facial resemblance."

"What does Four do?"

Rossi nodded at Morgan. "Social worker, recently laid off. By all accounts a nice guy, wife and kids, stable marriage. Moving right along….

"Number Five is 61, and lives in Aspen, Colorado. He's too old and he's verified as being on the job during the critical time-frame. He's only on the list because, A, he's gay and Strauss insisted that we keep that possibility on the profile, and, B, he's a plastic surgeon, so there's some potential there for altering people's appearance." He rolled his eyes and clicked the remote.

"Number Six falls down in the resemblance department, but he has other winning qualities. He's 31 and lives in Tupelo, Mississippi, far young end of our age estimates and he's thinner than our UNSUB, but in other ways he's really promising. Drives a Chevy truck, recently fired from the police department, rumored ties to corruption, organized crime, over his head in debt, and nobody's seen him or his truck for a month. Hasn't used his credit card but he called his dad on Memorial Day—his dad's a Vietnam vet—so he's still out there."

Rossi bent and picked up his coffee cup, took a couple sips, and clicked the remote again.

"Lucky Number Seven is 29, from Staten Island, New York, too young and a little plump, but with the Harrisburg connection and that Manhattan ZIP code on the letter, he looks a little more interesting. Significant criminal record, heavy drug user, and we can't verify where he was in the critical time-frame. On the minus side, he doesn't own a vehicle and has no driver's license."

"Job? Criminal history?" Morgan prompted.

"Construction worker, convictions for theft, assault with intent."

He beamed. "Moving along, Number Eight is 59, lives in State College, Pennsylvania. Too old for our age estimates, but as you can see, a striking resemblance to our UNSUB, plus he lives four hours from here. Strikes against him include that he's alibied for the critical time-frame, he doesn't fit the profile, and if this does relate to Aaron's career before the FBI, this guy's a naturalized US citizen; he was in Canada until 2002." He grinned. "And he was _here_ during the Mason Turner mess," he added, referring to a case they'd consulted on in Ontario. "All the wrong places at the wrong times."

"Is he from Ontario?" JJ asked. "Could he be a friend of the Turner family?"

Rossi shook his head. "If he is, we haven't come across the connection yet. This guy's from upper middle-of-nowhere British Columbia.

"Here's Number Nine. He's 40, he lives in Dearborn, Michigan, just a hop, skip, and a jump from Adrian, where the truck tags were stolen. Probably the least persuasive resemblance to our UNSUB. He can drive, but he doesn't have a car. He's a mental patient who announced in late April that he was going to visit his sister in Philadelphia—he doesn't have a sister, in Philly or anywhere else—and nobody's seen him since. And need I mention how close Philly is to Harrisburg, or how they're on the same Amtrak route that the newspaper disappeared on? If he looked more like Furface I'd be happier, but he's still in my top four.

"Number Ten is 49, lives in San Diego, seems a lot more muscular and bulky than Furface and he's been verified as being with his girlfriend during the critical time-frame, but in a lot of ways he fits the profile, and he drives a Dodge truck. He's reportedly loud, argumentative, heavily in debt, with a huge vindictive streak. Only problems are that he isn't much of a match for our guy, and that the only way he could have made his way here and then back is by plane and he doesn't show up on any airline."

"Private flight?" Reid suggested.

Rossi shook his head. "We checked, and anyhow we don't know how he'd have paid for it. He could have access to big wads of cash, of course, but we don't have any proof on that."

"What if he used an alias?" JJ put in.

Rossi shook his head. "Since 9/11, that's not as easy as it used to be. I'm not saying it's impossible, but pretty unlikely given TSA identification protocols."

He snapped the remote again. "Number Eleven is 52, lives in Jersey City. A tad too old and apparently he has a pot belly on him, but Jersey City is, what, fifteen minutes from Penn Station, in the heart of ZIP 10007? Other than that, he doesn't have much in common with the profile and we know where he was in the critical time-frame.

"On the other hand, Number Twelve is my personal favorite. He's a 43-year-old out-of-work salesman living in Sandusky, Ohio, who fits the profile pretty well even though this guy has apparently had that full beard for years. He was allegedly solo backpacking during the critical time-frame. Oh, and he has a Ford truck. And do I need to mention that if you're driving from Adrian, Michigan, to Cleveland, Ohio, even if you take the Turnpike, you're gonna pass within spitting distance of Sandusky? I'm flying out tomorrow to take a closer look at Mr. Twelve.

"And finally, there's Number Thirteen. Thirteen is 63, lives in Anniston, Alabama, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Marines, and there's no way he's our guy, since he's too old, verified as being in the hospital having minor surgery during the critical time-frame and he's nothing like the profile, but, holy crap, he could be our boy's twin brother—I mean, just look at him!—so I refuse to take him off the list."

**~ o ~**

"Are you awake?" Norton called as he approached the cell on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 15th, Prisoner's 32nd day of incarceration.

"Yeah," the lawyer replied, his voice barely audible.

Norton slid the door aside and peered in at his prisoner. Dark bruises marked his brow, and his scrubs were filthy, torn and stained. He hadn't shaved in days, nor had he bothered to brush his hair. The ladderback chair was nowhere in evidence—although it might be standing against the wall that contained the window and door.

Something, clearly, had happened to plunge the man into despair. Whatever it was, it'd come after he left the cell, after he'd cut his prisoner's hair, replaced his resources, and given him a hot meal of chicken and noodles, biscuits, and a spinach salad. Prisoner had seemed contented, quietly grateful for what his Warden liked to think of as "real food."

"What's your name?" he asked.

The lawyer regarded him dully. "Prisoner," he whispered.

"And mine?"

His captive gave him a long, searching look. Something undefinable crossed his features and then vanished. "Warden," he said listlessly.

Norton studied him for a long moment, trying to decipher what was going on, trying to figure out if Prisoner was up to something—shamming—or in genuine distress. If he was acting, he was doing a better job of it than he'd managed anytime prior. No, this seemed genuine enough. He decided to forego making Prisoner recite his statements today, and instead spend the time checking on his physical and mental state.

For as much as he hated what Prisoner had done to him, and to his family, he did not feel entitled to take the man's life, except, of course, in self-defense if necessary. Justice demanded that Prisoner pay the same price as he himself had, and if he went beyond that, then he was no better than the man who had wronged him.

"Come here," he told Prisoner, his voice almost gentle. "Hands."

For a moment something flashed in Prisoner's eyes and Norton almost thought he was going to refuse. That possibility had occurred to Norton, and he'd planned for it. But thankfully, after a moment or two of hesitation, Prisoner unfolded himself stiffly and came over to the little sliding door, extending his arms through it.

Norton stared at them in surprise. Ugly bruises nearly covered his knuckles and the backs of his hands, and his arms even had splotches of dried blood from numerous small cuts.

He wondered whether his prisoner's intent was to portray depression so accurately, play upon his sympathies so skillfully, that he, Warden, would enter the cell without securing him to the wall. If so, he'd unleashed a world of hurt on himself in vain.

"You're a mess," he said softly. He handed his prisoner the manacles. "Carefully," he cautioned. "No sense in making the damage any worse."

The lawyer studied him as if wondering what the catch might be, but he closed the cuffs over his wrists, his expression still bleak.

Norton Charpentier cleared his throat. "Your only assignment for today," he said, "is to explain to me exactly what's going on here—at least whichever parts of it you understand."

The man in the cell seemed barely to hear him. "It's all so pointless," he muttered.

Norton nodded. "'It' being—what, exactly?"

"This whole thing, me being here. Why don't you just kill me and be done with it?"

"Because that would be unjust," Norton answered. "Your punishment is to be the same as mine."

Sudden anger blazed in Prisoner's eyes. "You call this justice? Since when do ex-cons get to demand equal time from the people who put them away?"

Norton stiffened. "'Ex-con.' Let's talk about that, shall we?" He reached for the handcuff key and unlocked the cuffs. "Tell you what, let's make this a face-to-face discussion. Turn the other way and let's try this again."

Momentary surprise crossed the lawyer's features, but he obeyed in sullen silence.

The locks clicked open in sequence, and Norton entered the cell, sat down on Prisoner's bed. He looked around the cell in amazement. The space was clean, but nearly every moveable object in it had been destroyed. A heap of splintered wood was all that was left of the ladderback chair, and the wastebasket was overflowing with the battered remnants of Prisoner's rage.

It took considerable effort to force himself to look away from the mess and back at the lawyer.

"Why am I an 'ex-con," as you call me?" he asked.

The look on Prisoner's face was one of bitter contempt. "That's obvious—because you were convicted of a crime, served time, and, obviously were either released afterwards or escaped."

"Has it ever occurred to you that I was wrongfully convicted?"

"I'm well aware you _think_ you were. Ask any ex-con, they're all innocent, either they didn't do it or they were just misunderstood. Society has it in for them, they never catch a break, blah, blah, blah."

"Mmm." Norton kept his tone even, measured. "Let's deal with the last part of that first, shall we? The 'blah, blah, blah' part." He raised his head so he faced his captive squarely. "Because that is where you will find me, Prisoner. Among the 'blah, blah, blah.'"

Consternation and confusion warred on the lawyer's face. Norton struggled to keep his posture relaxed, his features blank. How many times he'd imagined this moment! A thousand times, no, more, he'd dreamed of the moment when the truth of him was laid out for this miserable piece of judicial flotsam to absorb—and all the positively biblical weeping and gnashing of the teeth that would ensue in the wake of that realization. Long before he'd solidified his plans to take the lawyer, he'd imagined this moment.

And it was nothing like the way he'd pictured it. _Nothing_.

He figuratively shook his head, bringing himself back to the here and now. "Among the 'blah, blah, blah,'" he repeated. "Among the 'D. None of the above.' Do you get my meaning?"

His prisoner shook his head slightly. "No," he answered, his own tone as measured as Norton's own. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"If I've neither been released nor escaped, what else could be going on here?"

Comprehension blazed in Prisoner's dark eyes. "No wonder I didn't recognize you," he rasped. "You aren't him at all, are you? You're his brother. His freaky brother with a grudge. He's still in the can, and you're determined to take it out of my hide."

It was Norton's turn to feel consternation and confusion. "Oh, dear," he sighed. "It seems that you're more creative than intelligent, Prisoner."

"Oh, right," his captive sighed. "This is all a dream, right? And you're, what, the fucking Ghost of Convictions Past?"

It was Norton's turn to sigh. "Typical disrespect for anyone who gets on the wrong side of the system. Well, sticks and stones, as they say." He got up, approached his captive. "Listen to what I'm telling you, Prisoner, and apply your justly famous analytical skills. As I said, I was among the "D. None of the above. So, if escape is (A), release upon serving my time is (B), and death is (C), then what does that make (D)?"

Prisoner's mouth set in a grim line, and he said nothing, but it was obvious that he was thinking furiously.

"Very well," Norton said. "I'm leaving now, but before I go I'm giving you more food and replacements for some of the things you destroyed. I'll replace the chair, but if and only if you promise never to intentionally damage or break it again. Do I have your word on that?"

The lawyer gave a grudging nod.

"Sorry? I didn't hear that?"

The lawyer whispered, "You have my word."

"All right. Clean yourself up and launder your uniform as best you can. I'll bring you another the next time I come." He opened the cell door, went out, and came back a few moments later with a loaded dolly, the contents of which he stacked on the rumpled cot.

As he removed Prisoner's cuffs, he added, his voice once more gentle, "And though it's not an assignment at this time, you might give some thought to the subject of forgiveness. I think you'll find it well worth your time."


	18. Playlist, Part One

He didn't know what time it was anymore, not for sure. That was the most troublesome part of his meltdown: While he wasn't shaving, when he lay huddled in his blankets for what felt like forever but was probably three to five days, he'd lost track of how much time elapsed.

He wasn't sure how he could possibly feel any worse—or more confused.

He'd finally figured out what Warden had been talking about. So his—Norton Charpentier's— conviction had been reversed, big freaking deal. Convictions got reversed all the time, for all kinds of reasons. Maybe he was granted a new trial and he skipped out while he was waiting for it. Nobody in his right mind—

Nortie isn't in his right mind, man….

But he'd replaced everything Hotchner had destroyed. Everything. Even the damn steam iron, that Aaron had found so amazingly useful once he got over the sheer weirdness of it. His scrubs dried faster when he ironed them, and if he ironed his sheets just before he crawled into bed it was wonderfully warm and toasty.

If I don't watch it, I'm right back into Stockholm Syndrome. He's not being kind. He's being crazy. They aren't the same thing.

Whine. Rattle. Clunk.

Aaron sat up in his tangle of bedclothes. He ran his fingers through his hair and massaged his still bruised and discolored face.

No. It's barely one shave—twelve hours.

Frantically, he tried to recall what the last assignment had been, the one that preceded his weird thing about giving some thought to the idea of forgiveness. Something about Berger v. United States, he recalled that. Probably some essay on it, which should be a freaking walk in the park for any federal prosecutor, hell, for any lawyer, the case law was so damned iconic, but Hotchner couldn't recall which aspect of the decision Warden—Norton—had asked him to write about, or in what context.

He heard the hand truck, one of its wheels whining as it bounced over the uneven surface of the poured concrete floor outside his cell.

He took a moment to remind himself of the hundreds of survivors he had interviewed—all of the amazing men, women, and children, but mostly women and children, the most vulnerable populations—people who had endured far more pain, more isolation, more humiliation, for far longer than he'd suffered at Warden's hands, and with less mental and physical preparation than he had.

He owed it to them to stop cracking under pressure like a whining chickenshit.

For Elizabeth. For Peter. For Rita and Sherie and Jacqui. For Oliver. For Martha.

That's a worthy memory exercise: List all of those amazing survivors, for myself and for them.

"Are you awake?" the familiar voice called.

Always the same question. "Yes," he called back, suppressing a sigh, thinking that after he got out of there he might be tempted to throttle anyone who asked him that, just out of pure primal instinct.

"Good," Warden said, closer now, and as the little metal door slid open, he added, "I was worried about you."

Aaron said nothing, but thought, I'll just bet you were.

"Come here and be cuffed. I want to see how you're doing."

Wordlessly Aaron got up off his cot and went to the window, presented his still-swollen hands. Once again, Warden closed the cuffs over his wrists more gently than usual, or at least it seemed he had; it was tough to tell considering parts of his skin still felt numb.

The locks whirred and clicked, and Warden—Charpentier—entered the cell. Immediately his nose wrinkled. "My God, it stinks in here!" He walked over to Aaron, sniffed, then shook his head. "It's not you—I can see you've cleaned up—it must be the bedding." He went to the bed, bent to smell the blanket, and jerked upright as though he'd been goosed. "Whew! You're in luck, Prisoner. I'll get you some fresh blankets and linens."

"Thank you, Warden," Aaron said, though frankly he didn't particularly care. He'd been so upset the past few days he hadn't even noticed the smell.

"You do look better though," Warden told him as he gathered up the bedding. "Still look like a three-day-old banana," he said with a slight chuckle, "but nothing that won't heal."

What am I supposed to make of this friendliness? This damn near bedside manner? Aaron wondered what Warden thought, in his most private fantasies, about the ultimate outcome of the whole take-Hotchner-captive project. Were they to become friends, or co-conspirators? Best buddies? God help him, lovers?

There was a click on the other side of the wall and Warden's—Norton's—boombox kicked in.

Mm. For the first time, the music that emanated from the anteroom wasn't symphonic. It was—it was—come on, think!—it was "Come Together," from the Beatles Abbey Road album.

OK, horrible coincidence that I just wondered if he thinks we could be—lovers—and now he's playing that, or did I pick up some kind of subliminal signals from him?

Hotchner bent a little and moved his head around, trying to catch some glance of his captor, hoping he wasn't prancing around like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs because that was too creepy even for Warden, but you just never knew.

"He got hair down to his knees," Warden sang in a pleasant baritone, "Got to be a joker, he just do what he please—come together, right now, over me."

Oh, Jesus, is that his idea of "Music to Seduce Prisoners By?"

Norton appeared in the doorway bearing replacement bed linens. "He wear no shoe shine," he sang happily. "He got toe jam football—you like the Beatles, Prisoner?"

"They're all right," Hotchner replied in as neutral a tone as he could summon.

"He say, 'I know you, you know me, one thing I can tell you is you gotta be free'—And you will be, I promise," Warden continued in a speaking voice. "You seem sure that I'm going to kill you. I'm not."

Hotchner looked at Norton Charpentier cautiously. If the little guy started expecting a little something from him, would he put out? Hell, yes, as long as there was a strict and verifiable quid pro quo getting him out of here faster—except there was nothing verifiable about Warden's little DIY operation, so—Aaron found himself privately grinning—You're shit outta luck, Nortie.

"You really expect to just—unlock your little underground palace some day and let me loose?"

Charpentier reached up and set a little apple-cinnamon air freshener on the shelf above the sink.

"Aw, Jesus Christ, Nortie," Hotch was horrified to hear himself bellow, "don't you have anything around here that doesn't smell like fucking food?"

The little man whirled around, an almost comic expression of stunned surprise on his face. "So you do know who I am!" he gasped, and abruptly the look of surprise was replaced by a facial tic, something that'd never happened before in Hotchner's presence. It was an odd, blink-blink-and-near-wink jerking movement of the left eye and cheek, and Aaron couldn't tell if his captor was going to explode in fury or bust a gut laughing. He braced himself for the worst.

But after what seemed like an interminably awkward moment, Warden relaxed and broke into a sly grin. "All right. Took you long enough! The question is, though, do you understand what you did to get into this situation?"

Aaron said nothing, but his heart was beating so fast he wasn't sure he could've spoken if he'd wanted to.

"I didn't think so," his captor said finally. "As for your question, Prisoner, yes, I do intend to set you loose when you've served out your term. I'll leave you to work out how that will happen." He took a step closer to Hotchner. "And regarding the subject of food, Prisoner, I'm sorry, but I'm no Gordon Ramsay—and neither am I 'Nortie' to you. Remember your manners. It's Warden, or sir. Understood?"

Damn, that was close! Amazingly, Aaron felt depressed and exhilarated at the same time. "Yes, sir," he said softly, somehow fighting back both a grin of his own and an almost irresistible urge to say, "Yes, Chef."

~ o ~

It was Wednesday morning, the 16th of June, in north central Ohio. Aaron Hotchner had been missing for 33 days.

David Rossi, in jeans and designer jacket, accepted a refill on his coffee, smiled at the server, and pretended to read his newspaper. Two tables over, the new assistant manager of Sandusky Superior Tire picked at his breakfast platter almost as if hoping to find something to complain about. The dude loved to complain and he was good at it, voice perfectly pitched to seem as though he was trying to be discreet, but easily audible several feet away. A master at the art of public embarrassment.

Rossi knew this; he'd been following the little creep since Saturday afternoon.

Nowadays, Rossi was as likely to find himself humming or whistling Johnny Rivers's "Secret Agent Man" as any of his Rat Pack favorites. He'd—well, they'd, meaning the BAU—decided to keep his little investigation low-key, in part because of the pathetic lack of probable cause for any of his thirteen potential candidates for Furface. Essentially, that meant that when it came to his candidates, he was working undercover.

There's a man who leads a life of danger;  
To everyone he meets, he stays a stranger…

The other critical aspect, the more important part, was the whole "private prison" thing. If the UNSUB was truly working alone, It was as critical to locate where Hotch was being held as it was to identify his captor. If Aaron was being held in the basement, the attic, the closet of an UNSUB's residence, that was one thing. If he was squirreled away, say, in a storage shed on the UNSUB's great aunt's farm, that was a little bit trickier. Ideally, before anyone even vaguely official stepped into the UNSUB's line of sight, they—meaning David Rossi—would already have worked out where Aaron was held, and in a perfect world, would already have set him free.

Number Twelve, the unemployed salesman who was Rossi's favorite, had indeed shaved off his beard, which had probably helped him bag the job at Sandusky Superior Tire. It'd also inched him further up the list of likelies. As to where he was keeping Hotch—if he was keeping him somewhere—it was in one of three or four locations, each less likely than the last.

His phone buzzed. He took it out, read the faceplate, and murmured, "I have a special filter on this phone, Garcia. Only good news. Anything else just turns to la-la-la-I-don't-hear-you."

"Then you're in luck," the tech analyst purred. "Or out of it, depending on what you're looking for. Any way you look at it, it narrows your field. Your Michigan guy just showed up."

Ah, yes. Number Nine, the mental patient from the suburbs of Detroit. Rossi visualized the map in his head. He was a two, three hour drive, tops, from Dearborn, if Penelope had called with good news.

"I'm waiting," he told her.

"A body they cut down in the woods in Sterling State Park has been positively identified as your guy," Garcia said. "Coroner ruled it a suicide, TOD at late April, probably not long after he told his social worker he was going to visit that sister in Philly that he didn't have."

"Huh. Well, like you say, it narrows the field a little."

"That it does, mon brave," Garcia replied. "How's that whole undercover thing working out for you?"

Rossi watched Number Twelve scowl at his bill and check it against both the menu and his pocket calculator. "Just fine," he said to Garcia. "Using muscles I thought I'd lost—forgotten I even had them."

Number Twelve, apparently finding no error worth bitching about, collected his things and rose from his booth.

"Gotta go," Rossi said. "On the move. Arriverderci, Garcia mia," He broke the connection, and replaced his phone in his shirt pocket. Johnny Rivers's voice rang in his head.

Be careful what you say,  
You'll give yourself away!  
Odds are you won't live to see tomorrow.  
Secret … Agent Man, Secret (thump thump) Agent Man….

~ o ~

That same Wednesday morning, in east-central Pennsylvania, Ted Hawthorne poked his head into his den and jingled his car keys. "Headed for the dump in ten minutes," he told his wife. "Anything to contribute?"

Bren smiled back at him. "I'll look around."

When he was gone, she pulled the recyclable liner from the basket, but as she started to tie the ends together, she caught sight of four crumpled pieces of pastel paper.

When on earth did I…?

She pulled them out of the bag. Unfolded them, studied them.

Right. That "mystery" stuff the printer chewed up when Sarge was copying it a couple weeks back.

She spread one sheet flat and shook her head at the chicken-scratches, right up there with the worst handwriting she had ever seen.

Then two names in the second of five columns leaped out at her, suddenly decoded: Anthony Chestnut, Marcus Purdom. Then at the top of that column, Worley/Purdom, Oct '96.

She knew those names. Knew all three of them, in fact, and knew exactly what they were doing in October of 1996. Her academic specialty had been American history, and her specific subspecialty was organized labor in the twentieth century, the troubled power struggles between unions and management. These were the names of people who'd been involved in a huge corruption and racketeering case, one that Bren Hawthorne had often used—had even passed out salient chunks of the trial transcript—in her college classrooms to illustrate the way political action funds had changed the way labor unions did business, and not always for the better.

The voices of the Bobby Fuller Four rang in her mind:

Breakin' rocks in the hot sun,  
I fought the law and the law won,  
I fought the law and the law won….

Hon Hi Stover would be the cowboy-booted, six-gun-toting Hiram Stover, who presided over the case. Anthony Chestnut had been the government's chief witness, an FBI agent who had infiltrated the union's power structure and its ties to the very politicians it claimed it wanted to replace.

I needed money 'cause I had none,  
I fought the law and the law won… .

She stood up and began rummaging through her old class notes, opening file drawers, folders of loose paper.

"Stuff to feed the dump?" Ted prompted.

Where has the time gone?

"Ah, sorry, nothing just now," she said distractedly and blew him a farewell kiss.

Got it.

She shuffled through the contents of a fat folder and compared it with the notes scrawled in the handwriting from hell on the crumpled sheets.

Whoever had written this had even known the names of the three assistant prosecutors: Coe, Lehman, and Brodzinsky. She wondered why the anonymous writer had left off both the lead prosecutor and one of the top defendants. Ever the academic, she picked up a ballpoint that advertised her local State Farm agent, clicked the top, and printed into the appropriate slots Aaron Hotchner and Karl Jay Newman.

With a smile, she remembered Sarge's words when he was making copies of whatever this list was.

A puzzle, huh? A mystery?

I love puzzles.

An examination of the other three crumpled sheets that her elderly printer had chewed up when Sarge was making his copies yielded only one other page of the three, one that seemed also to list court proceedings, this one from October of '94 through April of '96.

Hmm. Wonder whether these are pages two and three, or one and two?

I miss my baby and I feel so bad,  
I guess my race is run,  
'Cause she's the best girl I ever had,  
I fought the law and the law won… .

~ o ~

The sun was setting on a perfect Friday afternoon as Jennifer Jareau settled in at a picnic bench with Will and Henry, the dinner she had packed for her family, and an assortment of ice cream treats. It was June 18th, the five-week anniversary of Aaron Hotchner's abduction, and JJ'd managed to bag a little personal time, a long weekend, Friday through Monday, to visit her folks in Pennsylvania.

Will dug the plastic spoon into his maple walnut sundae and glanced around them through his shades at the kids, the parents, the various people enjoying the weather. "Which one is he?" he murmured to her.

JJ shifted Henry and offered him orange sherbet. "That guy," she replied, nodding toward a man, tieless, but in a suit, walking along the fringes of the crowd with another man, much taller and also white, and a black woman who in her medium heels was about the size of the potential UNSUB. All three would be members of the Hazelhurst College faculty.

Will checked him out. "Dresses better than Furface," he said, "not that that means anything."

It had been Will's idea to pair JJ's loneliness for her family and frustration at doing so little to track down Aaron and bring him home. A trip home, he reasoned, with a (cough) coincidental first-night stop in State College, home of Number Eight, would satisfy both longings. And if they happened to choose the park adjacent to the grounds of Hazelhurst College, where according to schedules posted online, this man was delegated to cruise this evening, just in case there was any trouble that involved a Hazelhurst student—well, what a pleasant coincidence!

The local oldies station had set up their RV nearby, and a table where they offered free cheap items with the station's logo, and a few simple games (to win marginally higher-end cheap items). Their current broadcast boomed Jefferson Starship from their top-of-the-line sound system.

Say you don't know me or recognize my face;  
Say you don't care who goes to that kind of place….

Most of the Hazelhurst students who were attending summer classes there flocked to the other end of the park, where the local alt-rock station's van was set up, of course, as did the majority of all the kids here, from the enormous campus of Penn State University (and the reason for the existence of State College), but those whose parents were visiting tended to park them at this end. Old Fogey music made their hearts warmer, their minds more tolerant, and their pocketbooks a little looser—all of which were important qualities to encourage in visiting parental units.

Don't tell us you need us, we're the ship of fools,  
Looking for America, coming through your schools…

Alas, nothing the target of JJ's scrutiny did while they watched him contributed much to his profile. Furface was allegedly a loner; Number Eight demonstrably had friends and his people skills seemed solid. He laughed easily and appeared comfortable talking with his peers, with students, with parents, with passing children. He drank a beer. He threw darts competently enough to win a fanny pack with the logo of the oldies station on it, and allowed the woman he was with to drag him out into the area set aside for dancing long enough to establish that she could dance—and he couldn't.

We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll!

~ o ~

It was the late evening of that same Friday, June 18th, heading into Saturday, the waning energies of Moon in Virgo kissing the waning energies of Sun in Gemini. It had been a brutal day, a never-ending day, and all he had to show for it were a few good words from the head of his department and a cheap fanny pack.

He really hated the elevator. It made groaning and whining and farting noises and it always seemed just a whisper from breaking down entirely. Even knowing that there was an interior ladder he could climb back to the top—or down to the bottom, then take the stairs—if it broke again could not completely alleviate his tension.

This bunker had, after all, been constructed by wildass white supremacist bozos fueled by a vision from a madman—the private-sector version of built by the lowest bidder. Charpentier had at long last located a trove of the bozos' writings (appropriately enough, in transcripts of the civil proceeding against them in the late '80s and the federal let's kick 'em when they're down, post-Oklahoma City, anti-militia fueled action of the early '90s).

The feds apparently prefer stationary targets.

The guys who designed it may have been barely literate, but their hatred for everyone and everything different from them had at least inspired them to build one hell of a prison. The cells were eight-by-eight because that was the largest size steel plate they could fit in the damn elevator. Bolt the damn things together, and voilà-modular prison housing! He wondered where they'd managed to find steel plates like these. Maybe from a Navy or civilian ship scrapyard, there were several of those within driving distance: Philly, D,C., or one of the numerous boatyards on the Great Lakes. Or Pittsburgh, focal point of the iron and steel industries, and an easy drive away to the west.

But why use steel plates, when other materials would've been a lot cheaper and easier to handle? Turns out, Norton had learned recently from perusing the stash of old journals and diaries, that their idiot leader had been frightened as a child by tales of people accidentally sealed into the hulls of ships. The bunker was designed to emulate Idiot Leader's childhood nightmares. Not terribly mature, but ruthlessly effective just the same.

Eight-by-eight. Hell, even Norton himself had been given more room than that when he was serving his time, at least when he got free of the nightmare that was Marion, one of the two federal maximum security sites. Of course, he had always shared the cell with another man. Most of the time it had been Arluss Watson, big and paranoid and (like most of his cellmates; the fates loved to laugh) not particularly motivated toward personal cleanliness. Arluss had been OK, though…friendly enough, if suspicious of anyone who enjoyed reading. Arluss was known to move his lips when he thought, after all. But people left Arluss alone, and for the most part, that meant that they left Norton alone.

Sometimes he dreamed that he was back in prison, but Arluss was never his cellmate. It was always Damien what's-his-name, the psycho who had only shared his quarters for five days, but who had made a huge and negative impression on a terrified Norton. Or else it was Bartoletti, the weird, mumbling old street hood who cracked his knuckles, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and made grammatical errors so blatant that it drove Norton nearly crazy. And once, he had dreamed he shared his cell with Prisoner. That had been creepy as all hell.

The elevator touched bottom with its usual rattle and whine.

Norton Charpentier stepped out into the large anteroom.

What the hell? For a moment he stood motionless, startled by the sound booming from the cell some twenty feet away. I'll be damned. He's singing! Not a bad voice, either. He recognized the number immediately from The Pirates of Penzance, transposed up a key or two to better suit Prisoner's baritone:

But I'll be true to the song I sing,  
And live and die a Pirate King.  
For I am a Pirate King!  
And it is, it is a glorious thing  
To be a Pirate King!

Had Prisoner not heard the elevator because of his little concert, or did he know he was being visited again and wanted to make a show of defiance? Oh well, it was of no importance, and Prisoner had fallen silent anyway. Norton walked over to the cell area and slid open the little door. Hotchner—no, goddammit, Prisoner!—Prisoner was sitting in the ladderback chair, his long legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles. Somehow, even in an old gray sweater and purple cotton uniform, he still managed to look dignified. Now, as the lawyer looked up at him, Norton had a sudden vision of his captive, much younger, standing on stage as an audience applauded.

Unable to resist, he asked Prisoner, "What role did you play?"

After a momentary start, the man answered, "Chorus, Warden. High school."

Ah, but you fantasized about playing the Pirate King, Norton thought, remembering the photo of that dark and intense boy who'd gazed out at him from the pages of the Burning Hills yearbook. Why else would you remember his lyrics so well after all these years? Instead you became what you thought was the next best thing: a White Knight. It feeds your ego while justifying your abuses.

"Come here and cuff yourself."

Prisoner's gaze grew distant. Norton knew he hated cuffing himself, knowing as any good profiler would that participating in one's own imprisonment was a form of mental surrender. But as in everything, he had no choice if he wanted supplies or human companionship.

Once Prisoner's arms were thrust through the window, Norton handed him the cuffs and watched closely as the man put them on. At Norton's nod, he jerked his wrists taut, proving they were properly fastened.

He unlocked the cell and went inside. Prisoner glanced over his shoulder at him, but quickly looked away.

The cell was neat and Prisoner's personal hygiene was above reproach. Whatever demons had seized his spirit earlier in the week had evidently slunk away.

When they had completed their Warden/Prisoner questions and the lawyer had mumbled his way through his statements, Norton seated himself on the cot. "How many musicals were you in during your school days?" he asked.

"Only that one."

"In the chorus."

"Yes, Warden."

For one blinding instant, Norton Charpentier wished that Prisoner were his friend, that he could confide his lifelong love of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas to him. Tell him of the first time his Aunt Sylvia took him to a performance of The Mikado. To tell him how he sang in the choruses of Iolanthe and HMS Pinafore in college, how he and two other accounting guys had won second prize in a campus talent contest singing the first act trio from Mikado, the one that started, "I am so proud..." with Norton singing the part of Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner.

My brain it teems  
With endless schemes  
Both good and new  
For Titipu, for Titipu….

It would be so nice just to chat, to get to know a little bit of the man behind the often sullen and resentful Prisoner.

But being Warden was a fearful responsibility, and he would never take it lightly.

He looked at his captive, still facing grimly away from him. He withdrew a fold of papers and slipped it under Prisoner's pillow.

At last he said, "Very well. Now turn and face me."

Prisoner shifted position as best he could and met Norton's gaze over his shoulder. He's a tough one...hard to read. But I think he's progressing as well as can be expected.

"I have something for you." When there was no visible reaction, he added, "Not supplies, though there are some of those too." He smiled. "I left it under your pillow."

Prisoner's eyes widened and he stared wordlessly at Norton for a full fifteen seconds. Then finally something in the man's face cracked and he whispered, "You're the Tooth Fairy?"

Caught completely unaware, Norton howled with laughter, clutching at the frame of the cot to maintain his balance.

If circumstances had been different, we could have been friends.

"No," he finally managed. "And I'm not sure how much good fifty cents would do you in here, anyway." Prisoner's face lost its cheer, and remarkably, he didn't want to see it gone. "Better than that," he assured the lawyer. "Your friends have responded to your letter, and I printed it out for you."

If Hotchner's—Prisoner's—eyes had widened before, now they were huge, as in Andersen's Fairy Tales eyes-big-as-saucers huge. You didn't expect that, did you?

Part of Norton wanted to stay behind and watch Prisoner read the letter, but another, more genteel side, wanted to give the lawyer his privacy. He stood up and headed for the door.

"I'll be back in a bit," he announced. "We have some unfinished business from our last visit, don't we? Berger v. United States?"

Prisoner murmured "Yes, sir," almost absently. His gaze seemed drawn to the pillow, to the exclusion of anything else. His lifeline to his loved ones.

In the elevator on his way back to the surface, more of Ko-Ko's words reverberated in the former Norton Charpentier's mind:

To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock  
In a pestilential prison with a life-long lock….


	19. Communications

 

Aaron sat quietly in his cell, trying to calm down, for several minutes after Warden left.

His hands were trembling so severely he actually stopped, fisted them together in his lap and breathed, slowly, in and out, in and out, trying not to hyperventilate— _What if this is a joke, a trick? What if this is a dream?_ —before he dared to reach under the pillow.

It was— _Oh, my God!_ —it was three pages, _three_ , and as he unfolded them he saw that they were text and pictures both, too good to be true. If his hands had been shaking before, they were out of control now, which was just as well, because he was suddenly awash in tears of—what? Relief? Joy? Eagerness?—swiping at his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his sweater, mewling. _Come on, Slick—get a grip!_ Reaching out sideways for fistfuls of toilet tissue, using them to scrub his face.

Yeah. Like he was anything like a steaming pile of _together_ about now.

He managed to get the pages straightened out on his legs and tried to focus on the words that were printed there. It seemed to be a printout from a Web page. A fraction of an inch of the bottom of each sheet had been trimmed away precisely by a paper cutter, probably with the URL, the date, and perhaps even a username listed there.

First words, like a posting, were identified in bold print as from **Section Chief Erin Strauss**. She wasn't on the top of the list of people he wanted to hear from, but he read her words as if they were honey, as if they were pure delicious oxygen to his soul.

_We're not sure what you are supposed to have done and we don't understand why you are being held but we are grateful you're allowed to communicate with us. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to lessen your sentence or improve your conditions. We're always thinking of you, Aaron. Never forget that!_

That was a textbook proper response to his situation, he realized, right out of the negotiator's playbook, encouragement and humanization, yet he sensed the woman's spirit in her words.

"Thank you, Erin," he whispered.

The next paragraph, short, barely a line, was headed **Derek Morgan**.

 _Stay strong, Hotch_ , it read. _We're grateful that you were given a way to communicate with us. You're always in our thoughts. We're working on this day and night._

Hotchner touched the printed letters with his fingertips, knowing intellectually that this was a printout from a computer posting, and yet getting the sensation that he was touching Derek Morgan, sensing his strength, his determination. Morgan was a man of few words, but those he chose to use he infused with undeniable intensity.

 _Stay strong_.

That would be a lot easier now that he knew he wasn't isolated; that he had contact, however brief and third-hand, with his loved ones.

He brushed away a tear and blinked the page back into focus.

The next paragraph was labeled **Dave Rossi**.

 _You already know all the stay strong, we're behind you, stuff, so I'll tell you that the updated re-issue of_ Malignant Predation _has already earned me enough royalties that when you're out of there we can go to Arby's. Maybe even get the BIG jamocha shakes. Sky's the limit, friend. Also, Prentiss has got herself a cat, and he's a mean SOB. You gotta know what song I'm thinking every time I see one of the pix she's posted all over her area. Oh, yeah, and stay strong, Aaron._

Hotchner could hear the senior profiler's voice as he read the words, could see the cynical, self-deprecating grin on his face. Could recall him bellowing Presidents of the United States of America as they drove along the dusty back roads of some godforsaken Utah county, _Fuck you,_ _Kitty, you're gonna spend the night—outside!_ after some mangy stray scratched deep gouges in Dave's forearm.

_God, when was that? 2008? And how does Rossi know all this obscure musical stuff? It can't all be from video games._

**Jen Jareau** , the next paragraph was headed. Jen. Not Jennifer, not JJ. **Jen**.

He wondered whether that was a hidden message of some sort.

_Morgan and Spence and Will and I are alternating nights at Jess and Jack's so they'll always feel safe and Jack will always have someone to talk to, no matter what the hour. Morgan's playing basketball with him, Will set up a little archery butte for him at the back of the garage, and Reid's teaching him to deal blackjack. Quite the education! We can't give him normal, but we'll give him the best approximation of it we can. Do I need to mention that you're in our thoughts constantly?_

His Team. His family. Unspeakably grateful for all of them, he shuffled the top sheet to the back and turned to page two.

 **Garcia** , the top line said. Just **Garcia**.

_Thank you for entrusting your letter to me, Hotch. That means a lot to me. We're all thinking about you all the time. Don't lose heart. We've been instructed to show no backgrounds in image files, so excuse that crappy old thing we wrap around the Xmas tree. FWIW, person(s) holding our Aaron Hotchner, the fingers of my right hand are forming the letters, I, L, Y, the American Sign Language shorthand for I Love You. No super secret FBI code. You can look it up._

Following the words was an inserted photograph of Penelope, her hand raised exactly as she had described, a brave and not entirely convincing smile on her face. The monitors that were usually arrayed behind her were draped with the ratty green cloth they swathed the base of the BAU's little aluminum Christmas tree with every year, the one that looked like the hide of Oscar the Grouch.

"You were the natural choice," he told her image, drinking in the explosion of color and light that defined their technical analyst. "Heart and mind. The perfect choice."

He signed "I love you" back to the graphic.

And gasped at the image that followed Garcia's.

 **SSA Emily Prentiss** , the paragraph was headed, but the picture preceded it. Emily was seated cross-legged in front of some kind of afghan with zigzag patterns of gray and rose, but he barely saw her, because in her lap was Jack Hotchner, in a soccer tee and shorts. He was holding a cranky-looking black cat.

 _Hey, Hotch_ , she had written beneath the photo, _finally found a couple men I can get along with for more than a couple days. You know one; the other's name is Sergio. Jack calls him Yu-Gi-Oh! Sergio isn't used to kids but Jack's so mellow and patient that Sergio seems to think he's just a short grownup. Jess and Reid and that bunch let loose of Jack long enough to let him escort me to the zoo and a parade. We didn't take Sergio. We miss you and we talk about you all the time._

He drank in every inch, every pixel of his son's face. So big! He seemed to have grown, to have matured so much in—Jesus, almost five weeks, right? But was that maturity he saw in Jack's face, or was it stress? Jack grinned at the camera and held the cat in a death grip that might explain the cranky expression on Sergio's furry face. He leaned familiarly against Emily Prentiss, a boy comfortable with his father's colleagues.

Aaron ached with pride, with love, with emptiness. He would cheerfully have given his arms, his legs, his sanity, for a chance to touch that little body again.

"Jack," he whimpered, his voice breaking, then turned—almost desperately—to the next paragraph on the page. No images included.

 **Spencer Reid** , it began.

_I stayed up all night trying to think of the perfect way to embed a code into my message that you would understand perfectly and your captor(s) would miss, then I thought, but if I were caught it could endanger you. So I spent the next night awake trying to think of a message that could be proved conclusively to contain no hidden messages at all, but you know how tricky it is to prove a negative. So this is just me saying, stay strong, we're doing all that we can. Jack and I went to the circus. He didn't laugh at the clowns, but he thought that when the elephant pooped it was hilarious. Garcia says this proves what an evolved little guy he is. JJ says that it just proves he's a guy. I don't know; I thought it was pretty funny too._

Hotch chuckled in spite of himself, picturing the elephant. Picturing Reid, trying to figure out how to send, or not send, a hidden message. Picturing Warden losing sleep over Spencer's message, wondering whether there really was a message hidden in it.

But then, at the bottom of the second page, there was a photographic image of a piece of yellow lined legal paper, upon which, in red marker, Jack had printed in his familiar beginner's block letters:

**HI DADDY THANK YOU FOR THE LETTER. I KEEP IT BY MOMS CANDLE AND YOUR PICCURE AND I SING TO YOU EVERY NIGHT.**

_Oh, God. Oh, Jack…._

He was such a keening, drooling mass of tears and snot that he set the letter on the floor so he could get his emotions out without soiling that precious piece of paper with another drop of his bodily fluids.

But he knew for an absolute certainty that he was awake, and that this was real, because his dreams were never so gloriously, ridiculously messy.

After recovering a bit, he was able to pick up the papers again. Only four messages were on the third and last page: from his mother, his brother, from Jess, and from Jess and Haley's mother. He read them through his tears, talking to each person.

He felt buoyed by confidence, by hope. By a sense that people knew what was going on, and they cared about his situation. About Jack. About _him_.

**~ o ~**

Once they were comfortably situated in a moderately priced motel near State College, once Henry was dozing in his crib with his wind-up dinosaur mobile rotating above him, JJ yanked three pages of notes from her jeans pockets and speed-dialed Dave, who sounded sleepy, but not the least bit unhappy about being roused.

"OK," she announced without preamble, "we have some pretty persuasive arguments against your Number Eight, but not quite enough to eliminate him entirely."

"God damn it," Rossi replied, but without any real rancor. "I'm looking for some irrefutable evidence here."

"I hear you," JJ said with a sigh, "and I wish I could throw you a lapful of absolutes. I'd say we're at ninety percent, Joseph G. McAfee isn't your guy. Maybe ninety-five. Bottom line, I don't know when this guy would have the _time_ to kidnap Hotch and hold him captive somewhere. He's—" She smoothed open her notes. "He's _always running_ somewhere."

"Like serials," Rossi said. "Always on the move, like sharks."

"If we had any evidence whatsoever that he's killed anyone," JJ agreed. "But Furface doesn't profile as a serial, anyway, and these don't appear to be random travels.

"He's part-time theater faculty at Hazelhurst. He consults privately in theatrical productions in four states. He has his 114," she added, in reference to the fingerprinting and criminal record clearances provided by the FBI. "We already knew that. Plus, he has spotless Act 33 and 34 clearances in-state, required because he works with kids.

"He teaches film and theatrical makeup to amateur groups and to kids in high schools. He's on the governing board of the academic enrichment center. He tutors math and science with grade school and high school kids. Parents and students both speak well of his methods and his personality. Only consistent complaint we found was that he gets pissy when people are late, and given his schedule, I can kind of understand that."

"Theater," Rossi mused. "Kids. What's his sex life like?"

JJ shrugged, not that Rossi could see it. "Apparently pretty average for sixty and unmarried. Has several girlfriends, all close to his own age, nobody serious, but a couple people hinted that he's known to place the occasional booty call. Reputation as actively, discreetly heterosexual."

She flipped a page over. "He volunteers with a group that trains therapy dogs and horses. He volunteers at two local history centers. He's a big supporter of the performing arts, he does Civil War reenactment stuff. He's an active member of Amnesty International—which could be interesting, of course, given the way we communicate with Hotch—and NORML, which is less so."

She heard Rossi's sigh. Other than their insistence on using and fighting for the legalization of marijuana, generally you couldn't find a more amiable and law-abiding bunch of scofflaws than NORML activists. "And he was a Canadian. Lots of pot activists in Canada," he said, "so that probably isn't a big surprise."

"Not really. So," she said in conclusion, "he went through New York the other week, en route to Boston for an opera gala, so he could have mailed the letter. And two of his students described him as 'quiet, a sad man,' rather than a withdrawn man. One compared him to Lincoln."

"Oh, that's terrific. He profiles like Lincoln. Must be our UNSUB."

"Well, there's no doubt that he _looks_ like Furface. And he moves kind of like him. But he's nothing like the profile, and honest to God, Dave, I don't know how he could pull it off without a Time-Turner."

"A what?"

"Time-Turner? From the Harry Potter books?"

"Sorry, JJ," the senior profiler rumbled. "I've managed—and I intend to continue to manage—to avoid both the books and the movies."

"Well, it's a device that Hermione—that's one of the kids in the books—uses so she can take more classes, ones that were held simultaneously. She goes to class, then dials time back an hour with the Time-Turner and goes to the other class."

"Huh," Rossi grunted. "And this is a good thing to do? To go to more classes? I mean, rather than it's cool to skip out of as many of 'em as you can?"

"Yes. And without a Time-Turner, I can't begin to figure out how McAfee'd have the time to kidnap anybody and care for him, unless he's part of a larger group."

Rossi sighed. "OK, let's put groups back on the table. But just until we eliminate Tina Turner Boy."

" _Time-_ Turner. You're writing without your glasses on again, aren't you?"

Rossi sighed again, more explosively. "Whatever."

**~ o ~**

It was early on the morning of June 19th, a Saturday. The sun hadn't yet risen to poke even the feeblest rays into the tiny apartment that the former Norton Charpentier rented over the stable on the Hawthornes' property. If he'd adhered to his original plan, he would have been at T-minus-one-week. Instead, he'd already had Prisoner in his possession for 36 days.

And now, Prisoner had his messages that Warden had printed from the activists' web site.

Ordinarily, Norton Charpentier could control his urges. He had successfully mastered them for years now, because to give in to them might mean the destruction of Joseph McAfee.

Screw it. Right now, he _needed_ it.

Hands shaking in eerie but unconscious mirroring of Aaron Hotchner's trembling fingers, he jammed a flash drive into one of the USB ports on his laptop. He scrolled through dozens of folders with meaningless names holding literally hundreds of equally obscurely titled work projects, until he found the one he sought.

When he clicked on it, a box came up demanding a password. It took him three tries to get the alphanumeric right, and suddenly he had access to three video files.

All *.FLV, too, he realized. Lord, had it been that long since he'd looked at any of them? Since even before he'd bought this machine? He thrust four other flash drives in turn into another USB port, finally whimpering with relief when he found the program that converted FLV files to MP4s.

But which one?

I deserve this, he thought, almost saying it aloud. He told the program to convert all three files. The little interface informed him that he had 5:17 minutes to wait.

"Fine," he said, actually speaking aloud this time. He mopped perspiration from his forehead and told his MP3 program to start playing something. Anything.

Holy crap. Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

Truly, the stars had either taken pity on him or were laughing their cosmic asses off at him.

"And I need you now, tonight, and I need you more than ever," he sang along, his voice cracking with passion. "And if you only hold me tight, we'll be holding on forever. And we'll only be making it right, 'cause we'll never be wrong—"

He pulled a crumpled tissue from his pocket, swiped at his eyes, and blew his nose.

_Living on a powder keg and giving off sparks._

He looked around the tiny room as if someone might have joined him there. He got up, made sure the shades were pulled down on those two south-facing windows.

When he got back to the computer, the first file had been converted.

Holding the tissue over his mouth to bite back any screams of need that might erupt, he double-clicked on the first file.

She was a surpassingly beautiful child with twin auburn ponytails and a secret smile, slowly rotating back and forth in a swivel chair. "But I can," she insisted into the camera. "And the hardest part, too. Just listen: 'Duck takes licks in lakes Luke Luck likes; Luke Luck takes licks in lakes duck likes.'" Her giggle of triumph was enchanting. "You gots to give me a ice cream now!"

He would have given his arms, his legs, his sanity, to touch her precious little body.

_So beautiful!_


	20. Forms of Interrogation

 

He felt at once weaker and stronger than he had since he first arrived in this miserable metal box. On the one hand, he missed his son, his family, his Team, more than he could express. On the other hand, their love, their encouragement, had stiffened his spine. The recollection of other survivors he had interviewed while he was with the Bureau reminded him that as bleak as his life was here, he had more control over his environment than many of them had ever known.

He had curled his messages from home into a tubular shape and used it to line the plastic tumbler that held his pens and markers. He suspected that if he kept them in sight, Warden might decide to take them back as punishment for—whatever the hell pissed Warden off the next time he flipped out.

He'd dozed for a while, he'd eaten the last of his peanut butter-and-honey sandwiches, a meal now as boring as it was unpalatable. He'd washed and shaved, and now he sat on his chair, using his cot as a table, and carefully measured pieces of legal pad paper against a cardboard template and sliced them with a razor blade.

He was dealing responsibly with the boredom issue. He was creating a homemade deck of cards.

 _Whine. Rattle_.

 _Shit_. He scrambled to stow his scraps of paper someplace Warden would be unlikely to look if he decided to do a cell search. He'd known Warden would be back before long. He'd said when he left the messages that he'd be back with supplies, and to discuss legal issues.

Legal issues. Aaron was more interested in personal issues, like: if Nortie's wife, Diana, left him because he was convicted of conspiracy to create kiddie porn—which was the charge, and not actually child molestation—then if the charge had really been withdrawn, why hadn't she returned to him? Warden might refer to his wife in the present tense, but his eyes had given him away when Aaron had mentioned her.

She had not returned.

Face it, women generally had a sense about that kind of thing. Not Warden's twin sister, the one who'd been married to one of the leaders of the conspiracy. She had a weird nickname that Hotchner couldn't recall to save his life. It was something like "Tesla" but not Tesla, and she had done the whole stand-by-your-man routine, up to and including participation in the throwing of Warden and whozit, the parts guy, under the bus.

Huh. The parts guy was the only one who'd avoided conviction, and apparently Warden had had his conviction reversed. So maybe the sister whose nickname wasn't exactly "Tesla" had recanted?

"Are you awake?" Warden called.

Aaron sighed and admitted that he was.

The window slid open. "What's your name?" Warden asked.

"Prisoner," Aaron said. He turned in his chair and looked through the window. Seeing the strained, distracted look—an expression that often seemed a harbinger of trouble—on his captor's face, he added, "Sir."

"And my name?"

"The one you were born with, or the one I'm supposed to call you?"

Norton Charpentier's bland, average features darkened. "I know the name I was born with," he replied icily. "What are you to call me?"

The cranky half of Aaron Hotchner wanted to say, _Well, you also know what I'm supposed to call you,_ but he restrained his tendency toward snark.

 _Keep it respectful. It's a meal ticket, nothing more._ "Warden, sir," he replied, probably a lot less meekly than he might have.

"Your statements."

As always, Aaron kept his gaze on the placards where his statements were printed out rather than make any attempt to connect with Nortie while he recited that crap.

"You read your messages?"

"Yes, sir." He didn't have to fake the gratitude in his voice. Warden could have read them to him, or just told him, _Your friends say so-and-so_. He had sent them instructions on how to reply to him—apparently in some detail, with the stuff about disguising image backgrounds—and had taken the trouble to print them out and hand them over so Aaron could read them over and over again. He could never minimize the kindness involved in that gesture.

"We're doing something new this time," Warden said. "We're having an education session. Move your chair under the window, the back toward this wall."

Aaron stood up and relocated the chair. As he neared the window, he saw that Warden's face was beyond drawn; his eyes were red-rimmed. Something was up, and it was big, and Aaron was pretty sure that he wasn't going to like it.

"Sit down in the chair," Charpentier commanded. When Aaron complied, he said, "Raise your hands over your head and stick them out the window behind you."

Even before Warden tightened the cuffs around his wrists, Aaron realized while it would be nice, in a way, to be able to sit when talking to his captor, to have their eyes on the same level, that there was nothing comfortable about the position. He felt desperately vulnerable and he gave himself fifteen minutes, tops, before his hands went numb and his shoulders cramped up.

"May I speak long enough to thank you again for the—"

"No."

_OK, what the hell changed in the past few hours? I know I don't need a haircut yet._

Warden moved around in the anteroom for three or four minutes, then the electronic locks snicked and the door opened. Warden entered the room, unburdened by any hand trucks or even any cartons of resources. He wore jeans and a light green knit golf shirt under a pale tan nylon jacket.

Hotchner shifted positions as subtly as he could as his captor settled himself down on the cot and glanced around the cell. To his horror, Charpentier produced his Enforcer from the pocket of his jacket and set it on the cot close by his right hand.

"All right, let's begin," Warden said. "Tell me, what section of the _Model Rules of Professional Conduct_ covers misconduct?"

Aaron stared at him with something approaching disbelief. At last he said, "Eight point four."

"How many clauses are in that section?"

 _What in hell brought this on?_ He tried not to scowl. "Six."

Annoyed, Warden said, "Six, what?"

"Six...point oh?"

Warden glared. "Respect, Prisoner."

Aaron sighed. He tried to wrap his fingers around the rod to take some of the stress off his wrists. "Six, sir."

"Better. And of which specific clause or clauses are you guilty?"

The lawyer took a deep breath. "None, sir."

Charpentier picked up the Enforcer and tapped it suggestively against his own forearm. "Would you care to revise that answer?"

Aaron blinked, swallowed, but held his ground. "No, sir."

"Recite clause (d) of Section 8.4 to me, Prisoner."

The problem with trying to grasp the rod was that it engaged muscles he really didn't want engaged, increasing the stress on his rib cage and diaphragm. _Isn't this how crucifixion kills you?_ He tried to keep a respectful attitude. "'It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.'"

Warden continued playing with the Enforcer. Aaron found his gaze moving almost hypnotically between the weapon and the man's face. "Define the phrase 'prejudicial to the administration of justice.'"

"That's difficult to do."

Warden scowled. "I may not have gone to law school, but believe me, I've had plenty of time to study this aspect of law extensively. So don't bother with trying to bullshit me. Well?"

"Warden, there's no single definition."

"No easy, canned definition, you mean. Very well, use your own words, then."

He'd been in this position no more than a few minutes and already he really, really hated it. He tried to keep his expression bland and his voice even, but it was a losing battle. "An act prejudicial to the administration of justice," he began carefully, "is either some kind of improper act, or the failure to take proper action, on the part of an officer of the court—one that seriously and, um, adversely affects the outcome of a case."

"And prosecutors, of course, are officers of the court."

He thought, _Ya think?_

He said, "Yes, sir."

"And which Model Rule covers the special duties of a prosecutor?"

 _Where is he going with this?_ "Three point eight."

Warden folded his arms as one who has just scored huge points in a debate. "Cite me the specific clause of which you are clearly guilty."

Hotchner took a breath as deep as his awkward position would allow. He slid his hips forward a little on the seat of the chair, creating more of a straight line between his diaphragm and his arms. "Sir, I—I can't do that."

His features stony, Charpentier flicked on the power to the Enforcer. "And why not, Prisoner?"

Aaron stared at the device, momentarily mesmerized by its powerful hum, then shook his head slightly to clear it. "Because, Warden, I haven't violated that Rule."

His intense blue eyes riveted on Hotchner's, Charpentier raised the Enforcer and slowly, deliberately slid up the control that increased the intensity of its output. He kept his voice low, almost gentle. "Cite clause (d) of Rule 3.8."

Aaron tried to keep his horror and desperation off his face. 'The prosecutor in a criminal case shall make timely disclosure to the defense," he said, each word harder to speak than the last, "of all evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense—Warden, could you please cuff me standing up?"

"No. Continue."

He drew another breath.

_Part of this is psychological; I haven't been in this position long enough yet for it to have any measurable physical effects, right?_

He gave up trying grab the rod or the sill of the window and just let the cuffs bite into his wrists. Breathing was instantly a little easier.

"Continue," Warden repeated.

_Where the fuck was I?_

"Um, of all evidence—all evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense, and in connection with sentencing, disclose to the defense and to the tribunal all unprivileged mitigating information known to the prosecutor, except when the prosecutor is relieved of this responsibility by a protective order of the tribunal.'"

Warden beamed at him, and it wasn't a happy smile. It was pure predation. "And did you ever— _ever_ —receive such a protective order, Prisoner?"

"No, sir."

"Then you admit your guilt."

Hotchner struggled to maintain his composure. "Absolutely not, sir," he panted, his legs shifting again, searching for a way to ease the strain on his upper body.

Charpentier rose to his feet, brandishing the Enforcer.

"Goddamn sonofabitch," Hotchner panted, his fury warring with his fear and—at least for the moment—winning the battle. "you were fucking _convicted_ , Nortie! _Deal with it_. You maybe got a new trial, but that doesn't make you innocent! I don't see Diana coming back to you, do you? Women _know_ these things! Most of them are pretty good at learning the signs as soon as they figure out that it might be a problem, and most of them aren't like your nutbag sister. Diana isn't letting the kids get anywhere near you, is she? What was her first big clue, Nortie?"

Charpentier fell on him with a roar, the cattle prod held low, going for the ribs.

Aaron Hotchner was not constructed to sit passively and let some kiddie-porn merchant take free shots at him. He raised his knees toward his chest and as the man reached him, he kicked out with all the strength he had left in his body after weeks of those fucking peanut butter and honey sandwiches. His stocking feet caught Charpentier in the diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him and sending him pinwheeling backwards. _Yeah. Let's see how you like it, porn-boy!_ The Enforcer spun out of his hand and bounced along the floor, landing in front of the door.

The edge of the cot caught Nortie at the backs of his knees and he sat down hard with a loud grunt, but momentum was not his friend at that instant, because his head kept right on going and slammed against the metal wall with a weirdly dull _thunnggg_ that made his expression go slack.

Aaron watched as Charpentier hovered on the edge of losing consciousness, hoping the little creep was dead even if it meant his own death, rather sooner than later.

_Die, you miserable controlling fuckwad!_

Luck wasn't with him, though. Warden recovered himself. He rubbed the back of his head and the back of his neck with one unsteady hand, and as the fire returned to his eyes it was all focused on Aaron.

"You will regret that," Warden said when he stopped wheezing, his voice far too steady, too confident, to make Aaron feel that he'd won anything in this round. "You've been told never to mention her name, and I don't believe that you're a stupid man."

Hotchner found that he had nothing to say. He watched with a weird silent detachment as Warden stood up, as he dusted his jeans. As he wobbled over to the door and recovered his Enforcer. As he took out his little door-opening device. As he left the room. As the door shut.

He heard his captor's tread on the concrete floor outside the cell. Felt the man's fingers tangle in his hair, pulling him back, and before Hotch could get his own fingers anywhere near the throat of his tormentor, the Enforcer slammed up against the underside of his jaw, up against the salivary glands and lymph nodes.

Fire tore through his body and he arched helplessly. For what felt like an eternity, nothing but the pain existed. He felt himself trembling on the knife's edge of unconsciousness, yearned for it, prayed for it, would have begged for it if he'd been able to speak, but then he sagged back into his chair, his own head bouncing against the wall in a freakish mirror of Warden's.

While he was still incapable of movement or thought, he felt the cuffs falling from his wrists. He tumbled forward in the chair, saw the floor heaving up toward his face.

_Felt nothing._

**~ o ~**

She held her head perfectly as the cameras flashed: her jaw just slightly elevated to disguise the first hints of a double chin, her gaze slightly to the right so she wouldn't have little purple galaxies in her field of vision for the next five minutes.

The family from her Oklahoma home district and their cousins from Texas pumped her hand again and clutched at their red buttons and travel cups and ballpoint pens and yo-yos with _Rep. Cynthia Allgood, Your Voice in Washington_ printed on them before they vanished in a little cloud of ugly cargo shorts and comical awe.

It was Tuesday, the 22nd of June. Although Congress was not in session, she was on the job, talking up the party's positions and glad-handing any constituents who wandered into the nation's capital as part of their business or vacation plans.

It had been 38 days (she'd been one day behind the curve) since Rep. Allgood had heard that FBI agent Aaron Hotchner had been abducted. She'd presumed from the git-go that he was dead, because, come on, most people who get themselves kidnapped wind up dead, right? This had caused a couple little _frissons_ of creepiness, because in her nineteen years in government, eight of them with the DoJ, Aaron was the first murder victim she had actually known.

And it was a shame, because he'd been smart and dedicated and crazy-ambitious and, OK, definitely at least an eight on the hot scale, but, hey, c _ops die_. It comes with the territory, and Feebs are just cops in ugly suits. _You pays your money and you takes your chances._

"Ms. Allgood?" her office manager, Coral, said in her doorway. Although Coral could put any minor functionary in his or her place, when she addressed her boss, everything seemed to come out sounding like a question. "An Agent Morgan? From the FBI?" She set a plain white business card on her employer's desk with a sharp snap.

 _Wow. They must really be coming up empty on clues if they're talking to_ me _about Aaron. Don't think I've seen him at all since, when was it? Fall of '97, right? That's thirteen years._

Cynthia Allgood glanced at the printing on the card and indicated the best of her three visitors' chairs. "Send him in."

_Oh, my goodness._

SSAIC Derek Morgan was pure catnip, all muscles and mocha in a skin-tight tee and a jacket tailored to look as if there was just nothing else on its agenda other than to drape perfectly over its owner's broad shoulders.

"Representative Allgood," he said with a nod.

"Agent Morgan. Won't you have a seat?"

Once he was seated and had politely declined refreshments, he smiled at her, but only with his lips. Not a real smile; a bureaucratic smile. "I'm sure you heard about the FBI agent who was abducted from his home on the fourteenth of May," he said.

"Aaron Hotchner," she replied. "Of course. Have you found—" She slammed on the verbal brakes before she could say _the body_ and quickly substituted "—anything useful yet?"

"We have," the agent said. He withdrew a piece of folded paper from an inner pocket of his jacket and set it before her. "We recently received a communication that we've established conclusively has been in Agent Hotchner's hands. It contained those words."

Cynthia opened the half-sheet and read the paragraph printed there.

_I am writing to you so you can pass the word to those concerned that I am alive and in good condition. I am serving a term in a private prison for crimes and injustices that I committed. I am being treated humanely. The length and severity of my punishment are contingent on my penitence and good behavior. Please let my family, my friends, and my colleagues know they are always in my thoughts. Assure them that I will eventually be released._

Instantly she was in investigative mode. "is this a photocopy?"

"No, ma'am, just a copy of the words."

"And who is 'you'?" she asked.

"Evidently the person the letter was addressed to—an analyst with the Bureau."

"'Private prison,'" she read. "He sounds remarkably calm about this. How confident are you that this is actually from Aaron?"

"Completely confident," Morgan assured her, although he said nothing to indicate the basis on which they'd determined that.

She was a little embarrassed to realize that she'd have preferred for Aaron to be dead. It would have been simpler. Tidier. Less—well, less _nightmarish_.

She folded the sheet again so she wouldn't have to look at that apparent obscene acceptance of a lunatic fate. _It really would be better_ _if he were dead;_ _captivity will kill his spirit, maybe already has_. Trying to keep her voice calm and professional, she said, "How can I help you, Agent Morgan? I haven't had any contact with Aaron in over a dozen years."

Morgan's bureaucrat's smile might have seemed sunny to someone who wasn't constantly under public scrutiny, but to Cyn Allgood it was no warmer than it had been the first time. It never got anywhere near his eyes. "It's called dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's," he said. "We're looking at every suspect he ever pursued and every defendant he ever tried, but we're also talking to all of his peers, from the Bureau and before. You served on four trial teams with Hotch."

"Three," she said, maybe too quickly. "We were assigned to a fourth together but my transfer back to the Southwest came through. I'm listed on some early documentation for _Moretti, Ford, et al_ _._ , but I never spent so much as ten minutes on the case."

"Three, then." Another automatic public servant smile. "'Crimes and injustices,' the letter says," he said. "I'm not looking for a whitewash here, ma'am. We know that nobody's perfect, that everyone makes mistakes and has lapses in judgment. I'm here to ask you to search your memory for anything that anyone might have interpreted as a crime or an injustice in Aaron Hotchner's professional behavior."

"Professional behavior," she echoed, realizing belatedly she might have sounded just a little bit too relieved.

He was too sharp by half. "I misspoke myself," he said smoothly. "His professional or personal behavior. Anything, however minor, however innocent, that someone might misconstrue."

_Oh, like screwing our brains out in the stacks at the law library? When my husband and his wife both thought we were taking depositions?_

She was a professional. She neither flinched nor flushed.

"Aaron—you called him 'Hotch'?"

Morgan nodded.

"Aaron was—is—laser-guided, a one-track conviction machine," she said. "And I mean that in the nicest possible way. If you wanted justice, you wanted him on your side. He came out of law school already understanding that _silence is on his side_. You know," she said, eager to make herself clear, "when you ask a witness a question and they hesitate, if you've grown up depending on your gift of gab, like most lawyers, your tendency is to fill that silence. To say something else. And it takes years to condition yourself out of that tendency, and Aaron, he was practically fresh out of law school but he alreay knew to just—you know, _stand there_ , just maybe a gentle tap-tap-tap with a finger on his opposite arm where the jury could see it, then a perfectly timed arch of his eyebrow. It said 'I'm in charge and you're failing' in terms that everyone understood. That's freaking _gold_ in a courtroom, Agent Morgan, and he came to the table with it already up and running."

Morgan's smile finally reached his eyes, but he said nothing. Just like Aaron, the FBI sonofabitch had let the silence work for him, and she'd obligingly run her mouth.

_Well, shit._

**~ o ~**

It was Saturday, the 26th day of June, the day he'd originally intended to abduct Aaron Hotchner, the man who had now occupied the cell in the bunker for six weeks and one day.

"Are you awake?" he called, and for the first time in a long time, the first time since, well, the first time he'd left his prisoner alone, he was fearful. He had wondered for days whether the man was still alive.

"I am," the feeble voice replied.

The former Norton Charpentier breathed a silent sigh of relief and slid the window open.

Aaron Hotchner, gaunt from a week with no new resources, gazed up at him from his cot. His cell was tidy. His hair was brushed and his jaw was clean-shaven; he'd managed to continue to obey all of the rules.

"Come here," Norton said.

His prisoner struggled upright and approached the window, his expression one of caution and curiosity.

"I'm sorry," he croaked.

It wasn't what Norton was expecting him to say.

"Never mind that now," he said, and thrust a thermos, a Styrofoam bowl, and plastic cutlery at him. "Eat this. Eat slowly; don't make yourself sick."

Ever the ingrate, Prisoner eyed the thermos suspiciously. "What's in it?"

Charpentier recalled a goofy game he'd played with his daughter, seeing who could come up with the weirdest and grossest foods. _A pineapple, piano, and diaper sandwich_ was the one he recalled best. They'd laughed about that one for days.

He wasn't in the mood for laughter now.

"Beef barley soup," he replied. "There are biscuits in the bag. Eat. I'll be back in two hours, and we'll talk. Eat slowly. Take your time."

He closed the large window and slid the tiny one open, the one beside the boombox.

He surveyed the CD cases scattered there and selected an all-star, gala performance of _Die Fledermaus_. Whether his prisoner understood German or not, surely the bubbly melodies and gay rhythms would buoy his spirits a bit as he filled his belly.


End file.
